ICY SCIENCE: SCIENCE SPACE ASTRONOMY Spring 2014 | Page 52

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and we are in dire need of a good classification system for them. That same year, I began interning with the
Cassini mission’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. I had
an amazing time, worked with amazing scientists, and fell in love with Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, mainly
because it stands out as a truly unique world in our solar system.

IC: How important is it to study Titan, and what can
we learn about our own planets early begins from
Titan?

In Saturn’s Rings is a ground-breaking
non-profit film in production where science
meets art on the giant screen. The film uses all

VK: I personally think studying Titan is extremely

real images from space and no CGI whatsoever.

important. It is a very complex world with a whole

In particular, the film employs images from

host of processes going on. Below Titan’s surface is

the Cassini spacecraft. The film focuses on

an underground ocean of liquid water. Titan has an

images of the Saturn system from the Cassini

extremely thick atmosphere that has more constit-

spacecraft but will show many images from

uents than other atmosphere we know of. But its

all across our visible universe. The filmmaker,

uniqueness doesn’t stop there. Titan is the closest

Stephen van Vuuren, uses an innova-

analog to Earth in the solar system. Since one cannot

tive technique where he animates still images

build a time machine to an early Earth, Titan is next

to make it feel like you are really flying through

best thing. Titan’s atmosphere resembles the atmo-

space. In 2011,

sphere of early Earth. Titan also has weather. On Titan

footage of the film went viral and that’s how I

methane rain falls from clouds which fills lakes and

found out about the film.

seas on its surface. Vast sand dunes (their composition is still unknown) stretch across Titan’s surface
similar to sand dunes on Earth.

ICY SCIENCE | QTR 2 SPRING 2014

the first minute of