Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory say Titan likely lacks a single global underground ocean and instead contains deep layers of ice and slush with isolated pockets of liquid water, following a reanalysis of Cassini gravity and rotation data that earlier suggested a hidden ocean.The team measured an approximately 15-hour delay between Saturn’s peak gravitational tug and Titan’s surface bulge and used laboratory experiments and computer models to infer a layered interior more than 340 miles deep, with an outer ice shell about 100 miles thick and liquid pockets that could reach another roughly 250 miles down.Flavio Petricca and
Baptiste Journaux, authors on the Nature paper, say the slushy scenario expands the kinds of environments considered potentially habitable and that
NASA’s
Dragonfly mission arriving in 2034 should provide decisive surface and composition tests.
Published: 22h | Updated: 18h