Perhaps some
day in the far future humans will set foot on Saturn's mysterious
moon Titan, one of the most interesting worlds in the Solar System.
Larger than the planet Mercury, Earth's moon, and the dwarf planet Pluto, and
second only in size to Jupiter's satellite Ganymede, Titan is the only known
extraterrestrial world with a dense atmosphere that realistically could be
visited by humans. A visit to Titan would require a space journey of a year or more and
traverse over 700
million miles.
Beneath Titan's 350 miles of atmosphere, intrepid explorers would likely
find a dark, forbidding landscape of rock, ice, and possibly tarry layers of
hydrocarbons and lakes of liquid ethane and/or methane (AKA natural gas).
The Surface temperature would be around minus 300° F, cold enough
to freeze exposed human tissue within seconds. There would
be no oxygen to breathe, and any water to be
found would be as hard and dense as granite. Despite these harsh
conditions, Titan could yet yield secrets regarding the origin of life itself
as it is believed that, with the exception of the extreme cold, Titan
resembles the primordial Earth at the time living organisms first appeared.
In this image, Titan's first human visitors are protected by thick suits
and helmets to shield them from the extreme cold--and possibly
toxic compounds such as hydrogen cyanide. They carry their
own oxygen as Titan's atmosphere is primarily nitrogen with lesser amounts
of argon, methane and other gases. Each explorer also carries "head" lights
attached to
their helmets to help them navigate a terrain that receives only 1/1000th
the Sun's illumination on the Earth; while this means that noon on Titan would
appear relatively dim, it would yet be over 300 times brighter than the Earth
under a full moon.