Sunday night UK TV has been vastly improved by Prof. Brian Cox's wonderful BBC Journey Through the Solar System. I was genuinely excited after the latest episode. The images of the methane lakes of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, were staggering. Some are big enough to be described as seas! These Titanic lakes, as seen below, are the only other known bodies of liquid on any object, besides Earth, in the Solar System! How fantastic is that! The lakes sit on a frozen icescape beneath methane rainclouds, a vista that is totally familiar yet completely alien. An unmanned mission to Titan will land in 2029. Imagine being a stowaway, Childhood's End style, after flying there and coming home you'd be 18 years older! Amazingly NASA hope to survey Titan's seas with what can only be desctribed as SpaceX 2029, the magnificent Lake Lander! (below). With it's promise of prebiotic life and earthlike shores, I so hope that I'm still around to see the pictures of Titan when I'm 69! It'll be like 1969 allover again!
Titanic Seas
Picture courtesy of Wikipedia: The Lakes of Titan
Lake Lander
18 years? Remember to take sandwiches. ^_^
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