Titan's Fluvial and Lacustrine Landscapes

TL;DR

This paper reviews Titan's fluvial and lacustrine landscapes based on Cassini data, discusses current limitations, and explores future prospects with upcoming missions and models to better understand Titan's surface and climate.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive synthesis of Titan's landscape observations and outlines future research directions with new missions and data integration.

Findings

Cassini data reveals Titan's surface features and climate patterns.

Current data limitations hinder detailed understanding of surface composition.

Future missions like Dragonfly will significantly enhance knowledge of Titan.

Abstract

In this chapter we begin with a review of Titan's fluvial and lacustrine landscapes as observed with Cassini remote sensing data, and what the many discoveries have revealed about Titan's surface materials and climate. Yet Cassini remote sensing data are coarse, topographic data are largely lacking, and the absence of in situ field measurements means we have little understanding of what the surface is composed of. At present, our knowledge of Titan's hydrology is comparable to that of Mars in the 1970's during the Viking era. Fortunately, the coming decades promise many new and exciting discoveries that can be achieved through Earth-based experiments, numerical modeling, and a continued commitment to the exploration of Titan by future missions, including both Dragonfly and orbiting assets. We therefore close the chapter with a discussion about what can be done with the current Cassini data and how new data, from both Dragonfly and a potential future orbiter, would allow us to leverage Titan to help solve some of the largest problems both here on Earth and on hydrologic planets and exoplanets more generally.