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NASA Scientists Recreate Atmosphere of Saturn’s Moon Titan & Learn what it Smells Like Too
frenchtribune.com
NASA has recently recreated the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan on earth. The recreation of the atmosphere of Titan was based on data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in orbit. The data helped researchers formulate gases that accurately match the atmosphere above the surface Titan.
The team of the researchers has finally resulted in creation of a new recipe that tells about main constituents of the brownish-orange atmosphere around Saturn’s largest moon, said research leader Joshua Sebree of the University of Northern Iowa, a former postdoctoral fellow at the space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
He said attempts were made previously as well to mimic the moon’s atmosphere by combining two gases, but in vain. The two gases are most commonly found on Titan.
“These experiments never produced a mixture with a spectral signature to match to the one seen by Cassini; neither have similar experiments conducted by other groups”, said Sebree.
The researchers were of the belief that addition of benzene along with some other related chemicals will match what was showed by Cassini’s spectrograms. This really brought the researchers close to the highest extent ever, Sebree said.
Goddard planetary scientist Mellissa Trainer said Titan has a strong aromatic character. Here she meant a group of hydrocarbons called aromatics. This includes benzene, which has a sweet, aromatic, gasoline-like odor.
Future missions that might look for extraterrestrial life will have great implications from the analysis of the atmospheres of distant worlds. It is believed that the composition of a world’s atmosphere will play a big role in displaying extraterrestrial life.
Source: http://www.ascensionearth2012.org/2014/06/nasa-scientists-recreate-atmosphere-of.html
