Titan backlit by the sun Titan is a cold, dark, smog-shrouded world larger than the planet Mercury and nearly half as big as Earth . Known for decades as the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere, Titan has many of the raw materials for life, including nitrogen, carbon and water. Methane is also an important raw material for other organic compounds. Roving and Living at Titan NASA is designing the equivalent of a sports utility vehicle to take on Titan's mountains, plus its air and sea. At midday, the Titan sky is dim and orange.
Clouds soar high into the sky, and it looks like rain.
Learn about a day on Titan. In a new study, researchers looked at non-visible light emitted by Titan, spotting small clouds that developed and disappeared daily, most likely after causing a methane rain shower. The results of the study, which confirm earlier suspicions about Earth-like weather on Titan, appear in the October 20 issue of the journal Science . The driving force On Earth, weather is largely driven by heat from the Sun, which creates temperature differences that move large masses of wind and foster huge oceanic currents. So a different force is thought to drive weather on Titan, weather that is mild by terrestrial standards.