Posted on by Matt Williams

There are Features on Titan That Really Look Like Volcanic Craters

Doom Mons and Sotra Patera, apparent cryovolcanic features on Titan. Credit: NASA/JPL

On Sept. 15th, 2017, NASA’s Cassini Orbiter concluded its mission by diving into Saturn’s atmosphere. Over the course of the 13 years it spent studying the Saturn system, it revealed a great deal about this gas giant and its largest moon, Titan. In the coming years, scientists are eager to send another mission to Titan to follow up on Cassini and get a better look at its surface features, methane lakes, and other curious properties.

These include the morphological features in the northern polar region that are strikingly similar to volcanic features here on Earth. According to a recent study by the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), these features could be evidence of cryovolcanism that continues to this day. These findings are the latest evidence that Titan has an interior ocean and internal heating mechanisms, which could also mean the planet harbors life in his interior.

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Posted on by Matt Williams

When Did Mars Lose its Global Magnetic Field?

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft celebrated one Earth year in orbit around Mars on Sept. 21, 2015. MAVEN was launched to Mars on Nov. 18, 2013 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and successfully entered Mars’ orbit on Sept. 21, 2014. Credit: NASA

Billions of years ago, Mars was once a much different place than the cold and desiccated place it is today. Basically, it had a thicker, warmer atmosphere and liquid water flowing on its surface, and maybe even life! The reason for this is because, like Earth, Mars had a planetary magnetic field that was generated by action in its core. But when that field disappeared, things began to change drastically!

For years, scientists believed that this field disappeared over 4 billion years ago, causing Mars’ atmosphere to be slowly stripped away by solar wind. But according to new research led by the University of British Columbia (UBC) has placed new constraints on when this magnetic field disappeared, indicating that Mars’ magnetic field existed sooner (and laster hundreds of millions of years longer) than previously thought.

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