Åbstract:
Titan has been revealed by the 20-year Cassini-Huygens mission to be remarkably Earth-like, with a landscape of vast dunefields, river channels and lakes and seas under a smoggy sky punctuated by methane downpours. Titan serves as a frigid laboratory in which the same processes that shape our own planet can be seen in action under exotic conditions, and has a rich inventory of complex organic molecules that may provide clues how the building blocks of life are assembled. I will discuss in particular Cassini’s observations of Titan’s polar hydrocarbon seas, and concepts for their exploration by floating capsules or even boats or submarines. Although the Dragonfly mission presently in development will not explore the seas directly, its measurements will illuminate astrobiology and the global hydrological cycle that links the atmosphere and the seas.