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While scientists have known about the presence of surface liquid and dust storms on Saturn’s moon, NASA researchers just got new evidence of potential life on the celestial body – the detection of fresh rainfall.
During its thirteen year mission, the Cassini spacecraft had studied Saturn, its many moons in the planet’s rings.
In June 2016, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured a large area of reflections near the north pole of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Researchers have now determined those reflections represented rainfall.
It was only this past week that the two-year-old images from NASA’s research on Titan were published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research.
The surface of Titan is frigid. Yet despite that, during its 13-year mission, the Cassini spacecraft had discovered numerous lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan.
NASA’s newly released images show that they discovered a bright patch on Titan surface, which they described as looking like “a sunlit wet sidewalk.”
However, this patch also disappeared relatively quickly. The team members have suggested that it was likely a large puddle of methane rain.
Last September, researchers spotted dust storms on Titan for the first time ever. This led researchers to hypothesize that these storms could be a precursor to life. NASA said, due to the chemistry of the atmosphere, that it was possible that these storms were comprised of “organic molecules.”
Titan’s atmosphere is made up of approximately 98.4 percent nitrogen, 1.6 percent methane and between 0.1-0.2 percent hydrogen.
NASA researchers say that once these organic molecules get large enough, they may fall back to Titan surface, which may play a role in the dust storms.
If there is life on Titan, NASA wanted to be sure not to contaminate Saturn’s moon with any microbes from Earth.
After first arriving at Saturn in mid-2004, in September 2017, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was completing its mission by going into a death plunge into Saturn.
NASA’s team intentionally made the orbiter destruct itself into the Saturn’s atmosphere to ensure that the craft never contaminated the moons Titan and Enceladus with microbes from Earth, given the possibility that these two bodies could be supporting life.
