Titan Triple Threat
Astrobiology Magazine
“Athena Coustenis, an astrophysicist and planetologist with the Paris Observatory, is helping draft a plan to send a hot air balloon to Titan, as well as an orbiting spacecraft and a surface probe. Called TSSM – the Titan and Saturn System Mission – this three-tiered approach to exploration could shed more light on the still-mysterious moon.”
“’Titan is the best place to go with a balloon because of the atmosphere,’ says Coustenis. Although the atmosphere of Titan is filled with a smoggy orange hydrocarbon haze, it is primarily composed of nitrogen – just like Earth’s. In fact, Astrobiologists think Titan’s atmosphere may be quite similar to how the Earth’s was billions of years ago, before life on our planet generated oxygen.”
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