2022
DOI: 10.1007/s10686-021-09815-8
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Science goals and new mission concepts for future exploration of Titan’s atmosphere, geology and habitability: titan POlar scout/orbitEr and in situ lake lander and DrONe explorer (POSEIDON)

Abstract: In response to ESA’s “Voyage 2050” announcement of opportunity, we propose an ambitious L-class mission to explore one of the most exciting bodies in the Solar System, Saturn’s largest moon Titan. Titan, a “world with two oceans”, is an organic-rich body with interior-surface-atmosphere interactions that are comparable in complexity to the Earth. Titan is also one of the few places in the Solar System with habitability potential. Titan’s remarkable nature was only partly revealed by the Cassini-Huygens mission… Show more

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Cited by 12 publications
(5 citation statements)
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References 283 publications
(379 reference statements)
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“…More data would have been helpful to better constrain the timing of the aforementioned events, and in particular, of evaporation and precipitation on Titan. In this context, an orbiter mission to Titan, flying on a polar orbit as proposed by Rodriguez et al (2022), would greatly help explore the interactions between the hydrocarbon lakes and the atmosphere through the methane cycle. Meanwhile, there may be opportunities to monitor the evolution of the surface temperature with seasons thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI; Nixon et al 2016).…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…More data would have been helpful to better constrain the timing of the aforementioned events, and in particular, of evaporation and precipitation on Titan. In this context, an orbiter mission to Titan, flying on a polar orbit as proposed by Rodriguez et al (2022), would greatly help explore the interactions between the hydrocarbon lakes and the atmosphere through the methane cycle. Meanwhile, there may be opportunities to monitor the evolution of the surface temperature with seasons thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI; Nixon et al 2016).…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…However, Dragonfly will only investigate the low latitudes, including dunes and the crater Selk. In the future, an orbiter, as envisaged by several published studies, would provide the important benefit of a truly global picture, including potentially complete global mapping of the atmosphere and surface at uniform resolution, with time-domain information to search for changes occurring. Other elements, such as a balloon, airplane, and/or floating lake probe, could provide valuable in situ information about other environs. …”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Future work should apply this method globally to the low-resolution scatterometry data, which were acquired at a large variety of polarization angles. This method highlights the importance of polarimetry in radar studies and the need to integrate radar polarimetry in future missions, both for a possible Titan orbiter (Rodriguez et al 2022) and for radar-focused missions planned toward other targets like Venus (VERITAS/ NASA and EnVision/ESA). 7.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%