Rivers on Saturn's moon Titan could help NASA determine whether moon is ripe to host life - Daily Mail

The rivers and tributaries on Saturn's moon Titan could help NASA's upcoming mission to the celestial satellite learn more about its geology and whether it's capable of supporting life, a new study suggests.

They also found that the images they used to study Titan likely underestimated the drainage density, which could show how they operate on the distant moon.

The rivers and tributaries on Saturn's moon Titan could be helpful for NASA's upcoming mission to the celestial satellite to learn more about its geology and if it's capable of supporting life.

The researchers studied Titan's rivers by looking at Earth-based radar images of rivers in places like Alaska, Quebec and other parts of the planet and comparing them to radar images that NASA's Cassini spacecraft took of the moon.

The researchers studied Titan's rivers by looking at Earth-based radar images of rivers in places like Alaska, Quebec and Pilbara, Western Australia.

The researchers studied Titan's rivers by looking at Earth-based radar images of rivers in places like Alaska, Quebec and Pilbara, Western Australia. .

They compared them to radar images that NASA's Cassini spacecraft took of the moon, before it intentionally plunged itself into Saturn in September 2017.

'Although the quality and quantity of Cassini [Synthetic Aperture Radar] images put significant limits on their utility for investigating river networks,' study lead author Julia Miller said.

Titan is well known to have a Martian-like landscape, as scientists mapped the icy moon in 2019 (using data from the Cassini spacecraft), revealing a landscape full of mountains, lakes, plains, craters, valleys and 'labyrinth terrains.'  .

On 24 December it released the European Space Agency-built Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan to study its atmosphere and surface composition

In December 2011, Cassini obtained the highest resolution images of Saturn's moon Enceladus

In March 2013 Cassini made the last flyby of Saturn's moon Rhea and measured its internal structure and gravitational pull