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The latest image of Saturn's mission on Saturn's moon, Titan, was taken just four days before the spacecraft fell into the gas giant in September 2017.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI
Just four days before the spectacular Cassini probe dive into the atmosphere of Saturn last year, the onboard cameras aboard the spacecraft captured the last image of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
This image shows what makes this moon so strange: it is covered with lakes brimming with methane and ethane. "Titan is a fascinating place that fascinates us with some of its mysteries," said Elizabeth Turtle, a global scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, in a NASA statement released with this image. [See Cassini’s Amazing Titan Photos from Saturn]
Titan is hooked on his mysteries even after the Cassini mission. This is particularly impressive, as the Cassini spacecraft was carrying a probe from the European Space Agency called Huygens, which landed on the strange moon.
One of these mysteries is exposed in this image, which shows only a few small clouds (the pale areas near the center of the image), although they were broken at a time when scientists were going to They were waiting to see a large cloud on the moon.
This annotated view of Cassini's last photo of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, shows the lakes of liquid methane and great seas like Kraken Mare, Punga Mare and Ligeia Mare.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Institute for Space Science
"In fact, atmospheric models predicted summer clouds over northern latitudes many years ago," Turtle said in the NASA statement. "So the fact that they still have not appeared before the end of the mission tells us something interesting about the methane cycle and the weather of Titan." [Landing on Titan: Photos from Europe’s Huygens Probe]
But apart from the lack of clouds, it is easier to admire the lakes that dot the surface of Titan, which appear here as dark areas. The large network of dark spots to the left of this image is a lake known as Kraken Mare, with Punga Mare above and Ligeia Mare under the center of the image.
When Cassini captured this image, she was about 140,000 kilometers above the surface of the moon. Although the days around the moon are over, scientists hope to one day return to Titan with a dedicated mission – NASA is considering one of these missions called Dragonfly, which could go around the moon.
Cassini's mission ended on September 15, 2017, when the spacecraft plunged into Saturn during an intentional death dive. NASA has won an Emmy award this month for coverage by the space agency of the end of Cassini's mission to Saturn.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her @meghanbartels. follow us @ Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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