Data collected by NASA’s Cassini probe has enabled scientists to estimate the depth of Kraken Mare – the largest methane sea. on Saturn’s moon Titan.
New research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, expands our knowledge of Titan’s hydrocarbon sea, specifically Kraken Mare. This sea, about 1,000 km long, is larger than all five Great Lakes in North America combined, and contains about 80% of the moon’s surface fluids. The seas on Titan are rich in methane and ethane and is comparable to liquefied natural gas on earth.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to provide an atmosphere. The thick, nitrogen-rich blanket that covers the moon hides a complex hydraulic system on the surface, but instead of liquid water, the rivers, lakes and seas on Titan consist of oily black methane. Titan also contains other curiosities, such as giant dust storms, volcanoes, a huge sand dunes.
As new research shows, the deepest parts of Kraken Mare may be more than 300 meters deep. This team, led by Valerio Poggiali, a research fellow at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, can actually not be sure of that figure, because the radar pings used to determine the sea depth have never reached the seabed.
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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft obitten Saturn of 2004 to 2017, and scientists have already of the smaller seas studied on Titan use Cassini’s on board alimeter. On 21 August 2014, Cassini flew within 970 km of Titan surface and could send radar plug in Kraken Mare. Interestingly, it was the same fly that led to the discovery of Ligeia Mare – a ‘Magical’ disappearing island on Titan.
Researchers at Cornell and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have designed a neat technique to determine the depth of Titan’s seas, which measures the differences between the time it takes for radar to bounce off the surface of the ocean as opposed to the seabed. This technique helps to estimate the depth of the sea, but the researchers have to make certain assumptions about the density of liquids on Titan and how fast radio waves move through it.
Using this technique, the team measured the depth of Moray Sinus, a northern estuary on Kraken Mare, which they say is 280 feet (85 meters) deep. The absorption rate of the radar waves suggests that the liquid in this part of the sea consists of 70% methane, 16% nitrogen and 14% ethane. The scientists have more methane than expected due to the size and location of the sea, but this discovery suggests a more uniform distribution of chemicals across the different water masses of the moon.
Elevation scans over the main part of Kraken Mare were less conclusive. As the authors of the study write, the NASA investigation found: “no evidence of signaling returns from the seabed, indicating that the liquid is too deep or too absorbent for Cassini’s radio waves to penetrate.” That said, if the fluid in this part of the ocean is similar to the fluid found at Moray Sinus, then it must be deeper than 100 meters and possibly up to as deep as 300 meters (300 feet), according to the study.
Poggiali is hopeful that a robotic submarine could one day be sent to Titan to explore Kraken Mare or another body of water. And in fact, he sees the new research as a step in that direction.
‘Thanks to our measurements, scientists can now deduce the density of the liquid with a higher precision and therefore the sonar better at the [future robotic submarine] and understand the directional flow of the ocean, ”Poggiali explained at Cornell University statement.
A conceptual plan from 2015 has shown what such a mission might look like, but nothing has actually been approved in this regard. That said, NASA will send an aircraft drone Dragonfly, to Titan, which would arrive at the moon sometime in the mid – 2030s.