The Search for Titan's Ocean

Details The Search for Titan's Ocean The Search for Titan's Ocean

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.6309a&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #63.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.544

Mathematics

Probability

Scientific paper

Recent models of Titan's interior including thermal evolution simulations predict that the satellite contains an ocean of water and ammonia under an icy layer. Detection of this ocean can be provided by the Cassini Radio Science observations of the gravity field and determination of Titan's Love number k2. This measurement is in principle possible because the quadrupole moments of Titan's gravity field vary periodically with the rotation period due to the eccentricity of Titan's orbit. Three Cassini gravity-science flybys of Titan have been completed (designated T11, T22, and T33). Simulations that use five flybys, the three completed in the prime mission and two (T45 and T68) in the extended mission, lead to the result that in the elastic case, where the Love number is real, k2 will be determined with a one-sigma accuracy of 0.1. In the viscoelastic case, where k2 is complex, the real and imaginary parts of k2 will be determined with one sigma accuracies of 0.138 and 0.115, respectively. Ocean and ocean-less models that include a viscoelastic rheology are built. In the viscoelastic case, there is a 93% probability to correctly predict the presence or absence of an ocean; this probability improves to 97% in the elastic case.

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