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Titan Flyby (T-92): Seeing Titan’s Surface in Stereo

In the upper panel of this graphic, gold colors show where radar images have been obtained over almost half of Titan's surface. The lower panel shows the new topography map, with contour lines added at 656 feet (200 meters) apart in elevation.

For the Radar instrument, one of the most significant Titan fly-bys of the extended Solstice mission occured July 10. Measurements from this flyby, combined with data from the previous flyby (T-91) , will allow scientists to produce stereo images of lakes.

Inbound, the imaging science subsystem (ISS) acquiree a mosaic of high northern latitudes on Titan's leading hemisphere, approaching northern summer. This area of Titan's surface has only recently been well observed and each new flyby adds significantly to our data set.

In addition, on the inbound path, the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) observed the north polar area and continued to monitor the evolution of cloud systems.

Outbound, VIMS was prime at about one and a half hours after closest approach and acquired a mosaic over the southern mid-latitude terrains south of the regions Adiri and Belet with instrument resolution starting at three miles (five kilometers) per pixel.

Date
July 10, 2013

Altitude
599 miles (964 km)

Speed
13,000 mph (5.8 km/sec)