Spacecraft spots tall mountain range on Saturn moon Titan

This composite image shows a massive mountain range running just south of Titan's equator. Image courtesy NASA / JPL / University of Arizona



This image is a composite of several images of Titan. The international Cassini spacecraft spotted a mountain range on Saturn's moon. Image courtesy NASA / JPL / University of Arizona

Spacecraft spots tall mountain range on Saturn moon Titan
Tuesday, December 12, 2006

(12-12) 14:51 PST San Francisco (AP) --

The international Cassini spacecraft spotted a nearly mile-high mountain range shrouded in hazy clouds on Saturn's giant moon Titan, scientists reported Tuesday.The mountains, which continuously stretch for nearly 100 miles, surprised researchers who re-analyzed the images to double-check they were real and not shadows of other surface features. Robert Brown, a Cassini scientist from the University of Arizona, said the mountains reminded him of California's Sierra Nevada range. "You can call this the Titan Sierra," said Brown, who unveiled the new infrared images at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

The mountains are the tallest ever seen on Titan and probably formed from the same process that occurs in the Earth's mid-ocean ridge. Scientists speculated that hot material beneath Titan's surface gushed up when tectonic plates pulled apart, creating the mountain range. Cassini found the summit of the range capped with brilliant white layers resembling snow. The deposits are likely methane or another organic material, which tumble out of the atmosphere, coating valley floors and mountain ridges. Scientists were puzzled by why the mountains were blanketed by a persistent cloud cover since the presence of clouds at the southern mid-latitude section of Titan is rare. Cassini flew by Titan on Oct. 25 and snapped images of the mountains. It also found new evidence of sand dunes and a circular feature resembling the remnant of a volcano.

Cassini, launched in 1997, is funded by NASA and the European and Italian space agencies.

Also Tuesday, NASA said its twin Grace satellites, launched in 2002, are giving scientists the first bird's-eye view of the distribution of freshwater storage on Earth's continents. The information could help improve flood and drought forecasting and determine how availability is affected by climate change.Observations from Grace — short for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment — have detected that several African basins including the Congo, Zambezi and Nile have shown significant drying over the past five years. Meanwhile, the Mississippi and Colorado River basins have seen an increase in water storage during the same period. "Before Grace, there was no way to keep track of these freshwater storage," said Jay Famiglietti, a professor of Earth science at the University of California, Irvine.

Scientists said it's too early to tell whether the fluctuations are is influenced by human activity or the result of climate. Future observations by Grace should give researchers a better picture of how aquifers are being depleted worldwide.

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On the Net:

Cassini mission:

Grace mission:

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

www.csr.utexas.edu/grace

Next Winter Olympics on Titan!