NASA/JPL

Titan is Saturn’s largest moon. It lies 1 billion kilometres (620 million miles) from the Sun, nine times the distance that the Earth does. Its surface comprises water ice and liquid hydrocarbons. The surface pressure is similar to the Earth’s, but Titan has a surface temperature of -180° C.

Lead author of the paper and Cassini radar scientist Ralph Lorenz told a new conference at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, "With its organic dunes, lakes, channels and mountains, Titan has one of the most varied, active and Earth-like surfaces in the solar system.”

Methane haze covers the surface of Titan, but Cassini has been using radar to map the surface on repeated flybys. It appears that Titan’s day is shorter by a minute than expected. One explanation for this is there is an ocean between Titan’s rocky core and its surface.

Lorenz , who is currently at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. said, "Now we see changes in the way Titan rotates, giving us a window into Titan's interior beneath the surface."

Launched from Cape Canaveral on Oct. 15, 1997, Cassini-Huygens is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).

The study of Titan is a major goal of the Cassini-Huygens mission because it may preserve many of the chemical compounds that preceded life on Earth.

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