Confirmed: Saturn moon has liquid on its surface

Besides Earth, Titan Only Body In Solar System With Fluid

Pasadena (California): At least one of many large, lake-like features on Saturn’s moon Titan studied by the international Cassini spacecraft contains liquid hydrocarbons, making it the only body in the solar system besides Earth known to have liquid on its surface, Nasa said.

Scientists positively identified the presence of ethane, according to a statement from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which manages the Cassini mission exploring Saturn, its rings and moons.

Liquid ethane is a component of crude oil. Cassini has made more than 40 close flybys of Titan, a giant planet-sized satellite of the ringed world. Scientists had theorized that Titan might have oceans of methane, ethane and other hydrocarbons, but Cassini found hundreds of dark, lake-like features instead, and it wasn’t known at first whether they were liquid or dark, solid material, JPL’s statement said.

“This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid,” Bob Brown, team leader of Cassini’s visual and mapping instrument, said.

The instrument was used during a December flyby to observe a feature dubbed Ontario Lacus, in the south polar region, that is about 7,800 square miles, slightly larger than North America’s Lake Ontario.

Cassini reached Saturn in mid-2004 and at the end of that year launched a probe named Huygens that parachuted to the surface of Titan the following January.

The mission is a project of Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Titan shows overwhelming evidence of evaporation, rain, and fluid-carved channels draining into a liquid hydrocarbon lake. AP

FUEL FOR FUTURE? An image released by Nasa shows what experts believe to be sea-size bodies of liquid hydrocarbon (shown in blue) on Titan’s surface