Titan’s weather

On Titan, methane plays a similar role to water on Earth when it comes to weather. It evaporates from the surface and rises into the atmosphere, where it condenses to form methane clouds. Occasionally it falls as a chilly, oily rain onto a solid surface where water ice is hard as rocks.

“Titan is the only other place in our solar system that has weather like Earth, in the sense that it has clouds and rainfall onto a surface,” explained Nixon.

Titan is an object of high astrobiological interest due to its complex organic (carbon-containing) chemistry. Organic molecules form the basis of all life on Earth, and studying them on a world like Titan may help scientists understand the processes that led to the origin of life on Earth.