Cassini Captures Lakes On Titan For ESA

Newly assembled radar images from Cassini provide the best views of the hydrocarbon lakes and seas on Saturn’s moon Titan. A new radar image reveals that Titan’s south polar region also has lakes. The Cassini-Huygens missions is a cooperative project finding NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency working together, with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory managing the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.




The southern region images were beamed back after a flyby on October 2nd in which a prime goal was the hunt for lakes at the south pole. A new mosaic image comprised from seven Titan fly-bys over the last year and a half shows a north pole pitted with giant lakes and seas, at least one of them larger than Lake Superior in the USA. Approximately 60 percent of Titan’s north polar region, above 60° north, has been mapped by Cassini’s radar instrument. About 14percent of the mapped region is covered by what scientists interpret as liquid hydrocarbon lakes. "This is our version of mapping Alaska, the northern parts of Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia and Northern Russia," said Rosaly Lopes, Cassini radar scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA. "It is like mapping these regions of Earth for the first time."