“We will be flying initially over dunes and then into rugged terrain,” said Elizabeth Turtle, who will lead the mission for the lab as its principal investigator. Turtle described it as, “eerily familiar on such a different and exotic world.” Rather than water, Titan’s seas are filled with liquid methane. Drills in the landing skids will collect samples of the Titan surface for onboard analysis. “Not only is it an ocean world — an icy satellite with a water ocean in its interior — but it is the only satellite with an atmosphere. And the atmosphere at Titan has methane in it, which leads to all sorts of rich organic chemistry happening at even the upper reaches of the atmosphere.”

Source: New York Times June 27, 2019 17:26 UTC