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Titan's Cold Case Files - Outstanding Questions After Cassini-Huygens The entry of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft into orbit around Saturn in July 2004 marked the start of a golden era in the exploration of Titan, Saturn's giant moon. During the prime mission (2004-2008), ground-breaking discoveries were made by the Cassini orbiter including the equatorial dune fields (flyby T3, 2005), northern lakes and seas (T16, 2006), and the large positive and negative ions (T16 & T18, 2006), to name a few. In 2005 the Huygens probe descended through Titan's atmosphere, taking the first close-up pictures of the surface, including large networks of dendritic channels leading to a dried-up seabed, and also obtaining detailed profiles of temperature and gas composition during the atmospheric descent. The discoveries continued through the Equinox mission (2008-2010) and Solstice mission (2010-2017) totaling 127 targeted flybys of Titan in all. Now at the end of the mission, we are able to look back on the high-level scientific questions from the start of the mission, and assess the progress that has been made towards answering these. At the same time, new scientific questions regarding Titan have emerged from the new discoveries that have been made. In this paper we review a cross-section of important scientific questions that remain partially or completely unanswered, ranging from Titan's deep interior to the exosphere. Our intention is to help formulate the science goals for the next generation of planetary missions to Saturn and Titan, and to stimulate new experimental, observation and theoretical investigations in the interim, before such missions arrive again at Titan.
Document ID
20180003991
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Nixon, C. A.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Lorenz, R. D.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
Achterberg, R. K.
(Maryland Univ. College Park, MD, United States)
Buch, A.
(Univ. Paris-Saclay Saint-Aubin, France)
Coll, P.
(Paris Univ. Creteil, France)
Clark, R. N.
(Planetary Science Inst. Tucson, AZ, United States)
Courtin, R.
(Observatoire de Paris France)
Hayes, A.
(Cornell Univ. Ithaca, NY, United States)
Less, L.
(Universita degli Studi La Sapienza Rome, Italy)
Johnson, R. E.
(Virginia Univ. Charlottesville, VA, United States)
Lopes, R. M. C.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Mastrogiuseppe, M.
(La Sapienza Univ. Rome, Italy)
Mandt, K.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
Mitchell, D. G.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
Raulin, F.
(Paris Univ. Creteil, France)
Rymer, A. M.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
Todd Smith, H.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
Solomonidou, A.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Sotin, C.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Turtle, E. P.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
Vuitton, V.
(Universite Grenoble Alpes Saint Martin d'Heres, France)
West, R. A.
(Virginia Univ. Charlottesville, VA, United States)
Yelle, R. V.
(Arizona Univ. Tucson, AZ, United States)
Date Acquired
July 25, 2018
Publication Date
January 1, 2018
Publication Information
Publication: Planetary and Space Science
Publisher: Elsevier
ISSN: 0032-0633
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN53150
ISSN: 0032-0633
Report Number: GSFC-E-DAA-TN53150
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: 80GSFC17M0002
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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