Geology professor Jani Radebaugh has found a true geologist’s paradise and is making plans to explore this paradise from high above its surface.
Plans to send a drone aircraft to Saturn’s moon, Titan, are just in the developing stages, but the mission would provide an opportunity to explore one of the most interesting moons in the solar system — a moon that has some amazing similarities to Earth. This mission would build on the wealth of data currently returning from the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn.
Titan, like Earth, has an atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen, and its mountains, rivers, lakes and clouds are morphologically reminiscent of Earth. This is astonishing considering the fact that the surface temperature of Titan is just a few degrees warmer than a tub of liquid nitrogen. However, by observing and studying the surface of Titan, geologists may better understand physical processes on Earth.
“When we go to Titan, all of a sudden the atmosphere is a lot like Earth’s in terms of its pressure,” Radebaugh said. “I think that’s probably been really important in shaping landforms that look so much like those on Earth.”
By studying the mountains on Titan, Radebaugh believes scientists will be able to more fully understand the tectonic processes occurring in the Himalayas and Andes on Earth.
She is also analyzing the sand dunes on Titan, which cover 20 percent of its surface. In order to discover any significant similarities between Titan’s sand dunes and sand dunes on Earth, Radebaugh studied the shape and internal structure of individual dunes in the Sahara desert.
By conducting research in the Sahara with students, she has been able to discover distinct parallels between the size and shape of Titan’s dunes compared to the Sahara’s dunes.
“The dunes [on Titan] are exactly the size that they are in the Sahara desert, for example; however, they are just made essentially of black plastic sand,” she said. “In reality, our understanding of the long-term evolution of big dunes in huge deserts is not that good.”
Examining the dunes on Titan will ultimately help scientists understand long-term climate change and regional desert effects on Earth that affect populations living near deserts.
Researchers at NASA are interested in furthering our understanding of the dense atmosphere of Titan, which is composed of both nitrogen and methane. At this location in the solar system, methane acts as water does on Earth, sitting on the moon’s surface as a liquid and functioning as a vapor in the atmosphere.
When sunlight hits Titan’s atmosphere, methane breaks apart into carbon and hydrogen before recombining into longer-chain hydrogen and carbon molecules. Studying Titan’s organic molecules may help researchers understand these building blocks of life on Earth.
Along with investigating Titan’s physical aspects from Cassini data, Radebaugh is involved in the Titan airplane study, now called AVIATR (Aerial Vehicle for In-situ and Airborne Titan Reconnaissance).
“For the airplane, we want to study the diversity of Titan,” Radebaugh said. “Titan has something for everybody. There are lots of atmospheric dynamics, so you can do some good climate global circulation modeling. You can bring that back to a more complicated Earth and better understand what’s going on in Earth.”