Scientists Smell Their Way to Creating Titan's Atmosphere

In an effort to better understand the chemical composition of the atmospheres of other worlds, NASA scientists have combined just the right "aromatic flavors" to recreate the pungent air of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

According to Melissa Trainer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recreating the moon's aromas has allowed a team of investigators to classify atmospheric materials previously discovered by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

"Now we can say that this material has a strong aromatic character, which helps us understand more about the complex mixture of molecules that makes up Titan's haze," Trainer explained in a recent statement from the space agency.

The pungent material in question was first observed by Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer, which revealed that the smoggy haze of Saturn's largest moon was made up of an usual mixture of molecules.

In a very classic investigative process, NASA scientists kept combining various gasses, including pungent aromatics, until the resulting combination yielded the same readings as seen by Cassini.

According to NASA, the team finally succeeded after combining several identified gasses with an aromatic heavy with nitrogen. The resulting gas mixture reflected atmospheric spectral readings made by Cassini and highlighted by Carrie Anderson, who helped co-author a study detailing these results.

"This is the closest anyone has come, to our knowledge, to recreating with lab experiments this particular feature seen in the Cassini data," said Joshua Sebree, the lead author of the study.

Scott Edgington, the Deputy Project Scientists for the Cassini mission, was most pleased with these results.

"Titan's chemical makeup is veritable zoo of complex molecules,"  he said. "With the combination of laboratory experiments and Cassini data, we gain an understanding of just how complex and wondrous this Earth-like moon really is."

The study was published in the journal Icarus on July 1.