2.1 Overview

The presence of an atmosphere, initially suggested based on limb darkening by Sola (1904) and later by the presence of methane spectral lines by Kuiper (1944), has long given Titan a special place in the minds of planetary geologists. The first close-up images were obtained by Pioneer 11 in 1979 (Gehrels et al., 1980), confirming a substantial atmosphere. These early observations led to the diversion of the trajectory of the Voyager I spacecraft to a closer encounter with Titan in 1980. Although the visible cameras on Voyager also had difficulty seeing Titan's surface (Richardson et al., 2004), radio occultation experiments suggested a surface pressure of 1.5 bars and temperature near 95 K (Lindal et al., 1983). These results were exciting because, for a methane mixing ratio of a few percent at the surface (Hunten, 1978), they placed methane's partial pressure near its triple point. Thus, like water on Earth, solid, liquid, and gaseous methane could potentially exist in Titan's environment. Ethane, which is the main product of methane photolysis, can also be liquid under these conditions. The presence of condensable volatiles in Titan's thick atmosphere opens the door for active fluvial, lacustrine, and pluvial processes that can shape its landscape with similar morphologies to those we find on Earth.

Prompted by the exciting results of the Voyager mission and the nearly two decades of Earth-based imaging campaigns that followed, NASA/ESA launched the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn in 1997. To penetrate Titan's thick atmosphere, Cassini is equipped with a Ku-band radar capable of obtaining images of the surface at a scale of 300 meters.