The Atlantic

Saturn’s Largest Moon Would Make an Unbelievable Vacation Spot

You’d need an oxygen mask and enough layers to contend with beyond-freezing temperatures, but could leave the sunscreen at home.
Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute

If you’re looking for a scenic lakeside destination for your summer vacation, you have two options: Earth, and a moon of Saturn called Titan.

These are the only two places in the solar system with bodies of liquid on the surface. Like Earth, Titan has an atmosphere, weather, and a natural cycle in which drops fall from puffy clouds onto the surface, before evaporating back up to start again. But the “rain” isn’t water; it’s methane, which exists as a liquid on Titan.

Scientists suspected that Titan had lakes years before they sent a spacecraft to check it out. The nature of Titan’s intriguing atmosphere that it might deposit droplets to fill streams, lakes, and entire oceans. When Cassini, the now-defunct NASA spacecraft, arrived at Saturn in 2004, it turned toward Titan, the largest of the planet’s moons. The

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