New NASA Mission Announced: Titan
Today, NASA announced a new mission , this one to one of Saturn's many moons, Titan. Titan beckons a visit from humanity so she can tell her tales to us. It is the 2nd largest moon in the solar system; slightly smaller than Jupiter's Ganymede, but still bigger than Mercury. With a thick atmosphere that is "four times denser than Earth's" and is much colder temperatures (appx. -290° F), some wondrous geologic and atmospheric processes are actively shaping the surface, such as raining freakin' methane (CH 4 ) and ethane (C 2 H 6 )! Yeah, these molecules of carbon and hydrogen, combined with a nitrogen rich atmosphere (like Earth), are very important to the creation of life as we know it (on Earth anyways), and they just lay around as liquid (not gas!) on the surface of Titan in rivers and lakes of hydrocarbons. While methane and ethane are produced by living things (e.g. aromatic farts), it can easily be produced through natural geologic processes just as...