Titan Unveiled: Saturn's Mysterious Moon Explored

Synopsis

For twenty-five years following the Voyager mission, scientists speculated about Saturn's largest moon, a mysterious orb clouded in orange haze. Finally, in 2005, the Cassini-Huygens probe successfully parachuted down through Titan's atmosphere, all the while transmitting images and data. One of the researchers who made that mission possible was Ralph Lorenz.

In Titan Unveiled, Lorenz, with Jacqueline Mitton, provides an insider's account of the scientific community's first close encounter with an alien landscape. Amid the challenges and frayed nerves, new discoveries are made, including methane monsoons, equatorial sand seas, and Titan's polar hood. Lorenz and Mitton describe Titan as a world strikingly like Earth, and tell how Titan may hold clues to the origins of life on our own planet and the possibility of its presence on other worlds. A new afterword brings readers up to date on Cassini's ongoing exploration of Titan, describing the many new discoveries made since 2006.