Titan may harbor underground ocean

Before the Cassini spacecraft began observing Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, researchers had suggested that a vast ocean of methane and ethane covered the hydrocarbon-shrouded body. But the craft’s penetrating radar, along with a probe that descended to the moon’s surface in 2005, revealed a different portrait. Icy Titan appears to contain small hydrocarbon lakes, not oceans. Now, Cassini researchers have evidence that Titan may have a global ocean after all—100 kilometers below the surface and consisting of water and ammonia.