What are the Prospects for Colonizing Titan?
Titan, one of Saturn’s 57 moons, is widely considered to be the most promising colonization target in the outer solar system. The largest of Saturn’s moons, Titan is even larger than the planet Mercury, and is the only moon in the Solar System to have its own atmosphere. The only moon larger than Titan is Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. The Jovian moons are considered difficult targets for colonization because of Jupiter’s radiation belts, analogous to Earth’s van Allen belts but much larger and more intense. A possible motivation for colonizing the moons of Saturn in the next few centuries would be to exploit the rich deposits of helium-3, an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion, in their atmospheres. Titan’s atmosphere is 98.4% nitrogen, in comparison to 80% nitrogen for the Earth, with the remaining portion made up of methane. Titan’s atmosphere has made gaining knowledge about the body difficult, until recently when the Huygens lander, dropped by the Cassini probe, descended through Titan’s atmo
