Saturn's biggest moon is the only one with a thick sky. Drift down through orange smog and methane rain onto a beach of ice pebbles, then keep going, through the ice, to a hidden ocean.
For this trip you are indestructible. Nothing can hurt you. As you fall, we will tell you what a real body would be going through.
Scroll to fall
1,000 km above the ground
You start a thousand kilometres up, at the top of Titan's sky. Its air reaches about ten times higher than Earth's.
Up here, sunlight breaks apart nitrogen and methane, and the pieces join into big sooty molecules. Cassini flew through and found them forming.
A real body: Almost no air yet. Below you, the whole moon is wrapped in an orange fog with no gaps at all.
250 km above the ground
The soot drifts down for years, gathering into an orange haze hundreds of kilometres deep.
This haze is why nobody got a clear look at Titan's surface until Cassini arrived in 2004. From space it's just a fuzzy orange ball.
A real body: A whisper of air, and −87 °C. The sky around you glows a dim, even orange in every direction.
160 km above the ground
In January 2005 the Huygens probe, carried here by Cassini, popped its main parachute about here.
Then it drifted down for two and a half hours, measuring the air the whole way. Every number on this trip down to the ground comes from that descent.
A real body: The air is thickening fast, and it's getting colder as you drop.
44 km above the ground
This is the coldest layer of Titan's sky, at −203 °C. Methane freezes into thin, high clouds.
It's one of the strangest things about Titan: it has weather, just like Earth, but made of a different liquid.
A real body: About a tenth of Earth's air pressure, and −203 °C, far colder than anywhere on Earth has ever been.
15 km above the ground
Clouds of methane drift by, and sometimes it rains.
Titan's raindrops are bigger than Earth's, up to a centimetre across, and in the low gravity and thick air they fall slowly, drifting down like snowflakes.
A real body: Nearly Earth's air pressure now, but about −190 °C. The rain would freeze your skin solid on contact.
3 km above the ground
Near the poles, Cassini's radar found real seas. The biggest, Kraken Mare, is larger than the Caspian Sea, and parts of Ligeia Mare are over 160 metres deep.
They're filled with liquid methane and ethane, the stuff of natural gas on Earth. Titan is the only other world we know with liquid lying open on its surface.
A real body: Thick, cold air and a dim orange daylight, about a thousandth as bright as a sunny day on Earth.
1 km above the ground
Titan's air is four times as dense as Earth's, and its gravity is about a seventh. Strap wings to your arms and you could fly.
NASA is building a drone that will do just that. Dragonfly is due to arrive in 2034 and hop from dunes to craters.
A real body: Thick, still air under you. Flap hard enough and you'd glide.
0 km down
You land where Huygens did. The ground is like damp sand under a thin crust, scattered with rounded pebbles.
Those pebbles are made of water ice, frozen as hard as rock and worn smooth by methane rivers. Huygens sent pictures for 72 minutes before its signal faded.
It's still the farthest from Earth any spacecraft has ever landed.
A real body: Half again Earth's air pressure, so no pressure suit needed, just a very warm coat and oxygen. At −179 °C, you'd need a lot of coat.
10 km down
Under the dunes and pebbles, Titan's bedrock is water ice. At these temperatures it's as hard as granite.
The dunes above are made of something else entirely: grains of that orange soot from the sky, piled up by the wind into ridges hundreds of kilometres long.
A real body: About 125 times Earth's air pressure, in ice colder than any Antarctic winter.
100 km down
About 100 km down, the ice gives way to water: a salty ocean wrapped around the whole moon.
Cassini found it by measuring how much Saturn's gravity squeezes Titan as it goes round. A solid moon would barely flex; Titan flexes a lot.
Ammonia mixed into the water may act like antifreeze, keeping it liquid below 0 °C.
A real body: About 1,250 times Earth's air pressure, in pitch-dark water a little below freezing.
300 km down
Below the ocean, the pressure is so great that water freezes again into kinds of ice you'll never see on Earth.
It's denser than water, so it sinks, forming a floor under the ocean instead of floating on top.
A real body: Nearly 4,000 times Earth's air pressure, in solid ice at around 0 °C.
2,575 km down
At the centre is a huge core of rock mixed with ice, about 3,400 km across.
Titan never fully separated into layers the way Earth did. Its rock and ice are still partly jumbled together, nobody is quite sure how deep down.
A real body: Perhaps 40,000 times Earth's air pressure, and probably several hundred degrees. Nobody knows for sure.
Through orange smog, methane rain and a buried ocean, to the heart of Titan. You made it.
Cold, orange and strangely familiar. Titan has thick air, clouds, rain, rivers and seas, but the rain is liquid methane and the ground is −179 °C.
The air pressure is about 1.5 times Earth's, so you wouldn't need a pressure suit, just oxygen and a very warm coat. With the low gravity, you could even fly with wings on your arms.
About 100 km under the icy ground lies a salty ocean that wraps around the whole moon.
It's one of the easier places to visit: no pressure suit needed, and thick air that shields you. But at −179 °C with no oxygen, you'd need heavy insulation and a breathing supply.
Yes, a lot. Its bedrock is water ice, and Cassini's measurements show a salty liquid water ocean about 100 km beneath the surface.
Yes. ESA's Huygens probe landed on 14 January 2005 and sent pictures for 72 minutes. It's still the farthest landing ever made. NASA's Dragonfly drone is due in 2034.
Yes. The air is four times as dense as Earth's and gravity is about a seventh, so a person with wings strapped to their arms could fly.
