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Titan

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Full-Text Articles in Geomorphology

The Study Of Titan's Surface Using Impact Craters And Analogues, Jahnavi Shah Mar 2024

The Study Of Titan's Surface Using Impact Craters And Analogues, Jahnavi Shah

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is an icy world harbouring a subsurface water ocean, a substantial atmosphere, and a flowing liquid on its surface. These distinctive characteristics give rise to complex chemical reactions on Titan, and also render it akin to Earth in terms of its landforms and processes. This positions Titan as a key target for studying prebiotic chemistry. NASA's fourth New Frontiers mission, Dragonfly, is poised to explore Titan’s surface in the 2030s. Dragonfly’s primary study site will be Selk crater, a relatively fresh impact crater located in Titan’s equatorial sand seas. Impact craters serve as valuable markers for …


Terrestrial Craters As Analogues For Degraded Craters On Titan, Taylor M. Duncan Aug 2023

Terrestrial Craters As Analogues For Degraded Craters On Titan, Taylor M. Duncan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Besides Earth, Titan is the only planetary body in our Solar System to currently have flowing liquid on its surface. Previous works note that dendritic and rectangular stream networks are present on a global scale on Titan, but do not map networks in the vicinity of Titan’s impact craters: Selk and Sinlap. The objective of this work is to understand how stream networks form adjacent to Titan’s impact craters. This information will inform future missions to Titan (i.e., Dragonfly) about the fluvial morphology of streams near their landing site. I conduct an analogue study with the stream networks at three …


Impact Craters On Titan: Finalizing Titan's Crater Population, Joshua E. Hedgepeth Aug 2018

Impact Craters On Titan: Finalizing Titan's Crater Population, Joshua E. Hedgepeth

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Titan is one of the most dynamic moons in the solar system. It is smaller than Earth and much colder, yet Titan is eerily similar to Earth, with rivers, rain, and seas, as well as sand seas that wrap around the equator. However, the rivers are made of hydrocarbons rather than water and the sand made of organics rather rock. We can use Titan’s impact craters to study how these processes modify the surface by comparing the craters depths, diameters and rim heights of Titan’s craters with fresh craters. Therefore, we have used the complete data set from NASA’s Cassini …