Saturn moon Titan's rivers highlighted in new map may help NASA's Dragonfly mission: Study

Astronomers have now claimed that a new study about Saturn's moon Titan could majorly help NASA's upcoming Dragonfly mission as new observations have revealed that rivers on Titan are deeper than earlier thought. Examined by researchers at Cornell University, the findings emerged after analysing the images beamed back from the Cassini spacecraft, as per Daily Mail. Scheduled for launch in 2026, the Dragonfly mission will advance NASA's search for the building blocks of life in an alien world. 

What are the new findings?

Published in the Planetary Science Journal, the findings in the study suggest that the scientists had earlier underestimated the drainage density of the rivers and tributaries that once existed on Titan. Moreover, the study authors reported that the new maps of Titan's rivers extracted from Cassini images can provide new insights into how deep the rivers were and what really happened in the wetlands. 

According to Daily Mail, the researchers arrived at the new conclusion after comparing Earth-based radar images of rivers in Alaska and Western Australia with the images collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft before 2017. The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission in 2017 when it plunged into Saturn's gaseous atmosphere. Whatever data that was beamed back by the spacecraft can be used to understand Titan's landscape at a fundamental level, the experts believe as per Daily Mail. 

As for Titan, the moon has a rich and organic surrounding and has a nitrogen-based atmosphere like Earth. Moreover, Titan also has liquids in form of methane and ethane and their lakes can reach as deep as 300 feet. Besides, Titan is larger than the planet Mercury and is the second-largest moon in our solar system.

NASA's Dragonfly mission

NASA will be sending a spacecraft to Saturn's Titan in 2026 that will land on the moon in 2034. The rotorcraft, which will be the agnecy's first multi-rotor vehicle will fly to dozens of promising locations on Titan looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and Earth, NASA noted. 

In a 2019 release, the agency informed that "Dragonfly will explore diverse environments from organic dunes to the floor of an impact crater where liquid water and complex organic materials key to life once existed together for possibly tens of thousands of years". 

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine was also quoted saying, "Visiting this mysterious ocean world could revolutionize what we know about life in the universe. This cutting-edge mission would have been unthinkable even just a few years ago, but we’re now ready for Dragonfly’s amazing flight.”

Image: Twitter/@TheMarsSociety