Titan Shows More of Its Personality

An ever more refined picture of Saturn's giant moon, Titan, is emerging from the data collected by the Cassini mission's Huygens probe, which landed on the moon's surface a year ago. The photochemical haze that hangs over Titan contains aerosol particles with solid carbon- and nitrogen-bearing organic cores. A mix of these particles and methane rains down on the “Earth-like” moon, running off into networks of channels, an international team reports in one of seven papers on Huygens published online Nov. 30 in Nature. Scientists also determined that the probe landed on a smooth, wet patch of ground with the consistency of sand or clay. The heat from the landing generated a burst of gaseous methane, which the probe recorded during its 2.5-hour life on the surface. How Titan replenishes the methane in its atmosphere remains a mystery, but scientists hypothesize that it could be stored, perhaps in clathrate hydrates, beneath the surface.