The Cassini probe was honorably decommissioned on September 15, 2017, after completing its mission to explore Saturn's rings, Saturn's atmosphere, and outer structures, before plunging headlong into Saturn's atmosphere and vanishing. This process was named the magnificent finale of Cassini by the Cassini project, the last major interstellar probe of the twentieth century, and everything disappeared in order to avoid "biological contamination" of the Saturnian system
Although the Cassini probe has passed away, it has left a valuable legacy, and the nearly 15-year exploration career has left a lot of detection data, which needs to be studied and analyzed by scientists for a long time.
The eight planets in the solar system include four rocky planets that are closer to the sun and four gas giants that are farther away from us. Among them, Saturn has very special characteristics, with a very magnificent "Saturn ring", which can be understood as a large number of "moons" orbiting the planet!It's just that there are a large number of these so-called "satellites", ranging in size from a few microns to several meters, mainly composed of water ice and dust materials!
In addition to this particular structure, Saturn has many real moons, the most notable is the Titan of Titan, and scientists are delighted with what signals they have found on this moon through data from the Cassini probe!
Titan, the first moon of Saturn, the second largest moon of the solar system, second only to Ganymede, is about 5,150 kilometers in diameter, compared to the Moon's diameter of about 3,450 kilometers, the difference is quite large!As you can see, the true contrast between the Earth, the Moon, and the Titans of Titan is shown below.
Titan has a lot of unique styles, and it is the first object in the solar system to have a thick atmosphere other than Earth, as well as a liquid ocean!It is unceremonious to say that Titan is the most Earth-like celestial body in the solar system, and even among the celestial bodies known to man, Titan is very special!
But since the discovery of Titan by astronomer Huygens in 1655, this huge moon has been full of mystery, and even we have not really observed the real surface of Titan, mainly because the atmosphere on its surface is so thick. Pioneer 11 in 1979, Voyager 1 in 1980, and Voyager 2 in 1981 flew by Titan three times, but none of them saw its true face!
It wasn't until the Cassini probe shuttled back and forth in the Saturn system, flying by Titan at close range 127 times, especially the Huygens lander carried by Cassini, so that it passed through Titan's thick atmosphere and finally landed on Titan, that scientists can truly understand this huge moon.
Scientists have come to the latest conclusion by analyzing Cassini's past data that Titan, an object that is much more mysterious than we think.
Titan, as a satellite of Saturn, is actually very far away from the sun, because it does not receive so much solar radiation energy, it must be an extremely cold frozen planet under normal circumstances, but because of the gravitational pull of Saturn, the interaction of internal structures will produce energy to provide heat to the entire celestial body, many moons of Saturn and Jupiter actually have such "special skills", so they all have liquid oceans, but the surface may be frozen worlds!
Cracks in Titan's icy surface are frequented by fog plumes, which are found to be rich in organic molecules
In addition to methanol, ethane and molecular oxygen, scientists have also found organic molecules such as hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and propylene in the plume ejected from Titan, which are involved in chemical reactions related to the origin of life on Earth.
Scientists speculate that beneath Titan's frozen world is likely to have a hot seabed environment, which provides a suitable living space and environment for the birth, evolution and development of life.
Of course, until today, scientists have never really understood Titan, we only know that it has a thick atmosphere, and there are even liquid methane and ethane lakes on its surface, and there are even liquid oceans in some frozen areas, although it is unlikely that there are some high-level intelligent life, but we cannot deny the possibility of life being born on Titan, and according to the information we have so far, this possibility is very high!
For a long time in the future, the space exploration of human civilization will only be concentrated in the solar system, in fact, in addition to the Titans of Titan, there is also Europa, these celestial bodies are very likely to have extraterrestrial life.
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