Artist’s conception of Titan’s surface with Saturn in the background (NASA/Craig Attebery)
The search for life elsewhere in the solar system has tantalized humanity for centuries. Scientists are increasingly turning to places in the universe where the atmosphere might replicate the chemical precursors of life as we know it, and Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, has emerged as a particular focus of study.
NASA describes Titan as one of the most Earth-like worlds found to date, and one that offers a glimpse of what our own planet might have been like before life evolved. A diverse array of organic molecules exists in this frozen “prebiotic” world, one that the Cassini mission has shown shares many parallels to Earth, including lakes, rivers, channels, dunes, rain, clouds, mountains, and possibly volcanoes.
Ralph Lorenz, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, examines how Titan is now being explored in space missions and in the laboratory. For example, by chemically recreating Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes, researchers are discovering interactions previously unknown to science, which may help us understand how the moon came to be and its similarity to Earth when it produced the beginnings of life.
Lorenz specializes in research on Titan’s climate, weather, and landscape, and was the project scientist for the NASA Titan Mare Explorer mission, a capsule proposed to splash down in 2023 into Titan's polar sea, Ligeia Mare.
Other Connections
NASA’s Cassini-Huygens unmanned space probe was sent to Saturn in 1997. (Ralph Lorenz worked on its design at the European Space Agency.) The craft begins its “grand finale” in November, ending in September 2017 with 22 orbits of the planet and a plunge between Saturn and its rings. Learn more about how Cassini-Huygens will close out 20 years in space, and see a computer-generated view from the perspective of the spacecraft as it dives between the rings and Saturn's cloud tops.
