Titan, a sense of déjà vu?

Today on Far Future Horizons we focus our sights on Saturn’s mysterious and mesmerizing moon Titan. Titan is a moon shrouded in a thick orange red atmosphere which, like the planet Venus, hides its surface from the gaze of terrestrial astronomers. To paraphrase the great Winston Churchill, Titan was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. And, our puzzlement over Titan only deepened when we pierce its veil and obtained our very first pictures of its surface.

So much so, and quoting directly from an upcoming article in Scientific American titled “The Moon That Would Be a Planet”:

“….. On the morning of January 14, 2005, at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, the pictures caused jubilation and puzzlement in equal measure. None of us expected the landscape to look so Earth-like. 

As Huygens parachuted down, its aerial pictures showed branching river channels cut by rain-fed streams. It landed on the damp, pebble-covered site of a recent flash flood. What was alien about Titan was its eerie familiarity”. 

And, it is this sense of déjà vu that prompts us to ask the question is Titan, A Place Like Home?

The Seas of Titan

Titan: A Place Like Home?

BBC - Horizon - 2005 - Titan A Place Like Home by DocumentaryHD2014
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