TITAN'S MITHRIM MONTES BY NASA CASSINI MISSION

NASA CASSINI MISSION (1997- 2017)

Mithrim Montes (3,337 m - 10,948 ft) 

 TITAN (SATURN'S MOON)

The mountain

Mithrim Montes (3,337 m - 10,948 ft) is the highest  point of Saturn's largest moon Titan. The researchers found that all of Titan's highest peaks are about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) in elevation. The study used images and other data from Cassini's radar instrument, which can peer through the obscuring smog of Titan's atmosphere to reveal the surface in detail.

"It's not only the highest point we've found so far on Titan, but we think it's the highest point we're likely to find," said Stephen Wall, deputy lead of the Cassini radar team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The results, which use data collected by Cassini's radar instrument, was presented at the 47th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas.

Most of Titan's tallest mountains appear to be close to the equator. The researchers identified other peaks of similar height within the Mithrim Montes, as well as in the rugged region known as Xanadu, and in collections of more isolated peaks called "ridge belts" located near the landing site of ESA's Huygens probe.

The investigation was originally motivated by a search for active zones within Titan's crust -- places where dynamic forces have shaped the landscape, perhaps in the relatively recent past.

"As explorers, we're motivated to find the highest or deepest places, partly because it's exciting. But Titan's extremes also tell us important things about forces affecting its evolution" said Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, who led the research.

Mountains and cliffs on Earth usually are found in locations where forces have shoved the surface upward from underneath. Forces of erosion, including wind, rain and runoff, slowly wear them down over time. The Himalaya and Andes Mountains are examples of places where interior forces are at work today. The Appalachian Mountains represent much more ancient activity that produced similarly gigantic peaks long ago, which have since eroded.

Cassini has found that Titan also has rain and rivers that erode its landscape. According to Radebaugh, the process probably proceeds much more slowly on Titan than on Earth because, at 10 times Earth's distance from the sun, there is less energy to power erosive processes in the moon's atmosphere.  Titan's icy crust sits atop a deep ocean of liquid water that probably acts much like Earth's upper mantle -- the layer of hot, high-pressure rock below the crust that can slowly flow and deform over time.

The fact that Titan has significant mountains at all suggests that some active tectonic forces could be affecting the surface, for example, related to Titan's rotation, tidal forces from Saturn or cooling of the crust. The next step for the researchers will be trying to figure out what could produce such tall peaks on an icy ocean world.

"There is lot of value in examining the topography of Titan in a broad, global sense, since it tells us about forces acting on the surface from below as well as above," said Radebaugh.

 Source: 

 -  NASA- Cassini Mission at Saturn

- Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Saturn 

- Caltech

- Agenzia Spatiale Italiana (ASI) 

- European Spatial Agency (ESA)

The mission 

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the US and several European countries. 

The mission was launched on  October 15, 1997 at 8:43 UTC. This 20 years mission was programmed to end on September 15, 2017 by what is called The Grande Finale.

 Source: 
 -  NASA- Cassini Mission at Saturn

IAPETUS RIDGE BY NASA CASSINI MISSION

NASA CASSINI MISSION (1997-2017)

Iapetus equatorial ridge (20,000 m - 65,6168 ft)  or (20 km - 12, 43 mi)

Saturn planet (Iapetus moon) 

1. Iapetus equatorial ridge on 10/09/2007 

2. Photomosaic of the Iapetus moon  from NASA Cassini Spacecraft  on 31/12/2004

Assembled by Matt McIrvin  

The mountain 

Iapetus is one of the numerous Saturn's moon which has a 10 to 20 kilometers high (20,000 m - 65,6168 ft)  ridge above the surrounding plains, running along most of its equator, making them some of the tallest mountains in the Solar System.  Iapetus's equatorial ridge was discovered when the NASA Cassini spacecraft imaged Iapetus on 31 December 2004, during the NASA Cassini Mission to Saturn.  The ridge forms a complex system including isolated peaks, segments of more than 200 km and sections with three near parallel ridges. There are bright areas on the sides of the equatorial ridge near Iapetus's bright trailing hemisphere, which were already visible in Voyager Missions images appearing like mountains and were nicknamed the "Voyager Mountains". Within the bright regions there is no ridge, but there are a series of isolated 10 km (6 miles) peaks along the equator. The ridge system is heavily cratered, indicating that it is ancient. 

The prominent equatorial bulge gives Iapetus a walnut-like appearance. 

It is not clear how the ridge formed. One difficulty is to explain why it follows the equator almost perfectly. There are at least four current hypotheses, but none of them explains why the ridge is confined to Cassini Regio.

1. A team of scientists associated with the Cassini mission have argued that the ridge could be a remnant of the oblate shape of the young Iapetus, when it was rotating more rapidly than it does today.  The height of the ridge suggests a maximum rotational period of 17 hours. 

2. The ridge could be icy material that welled up from beneath the surface and then solidified. 

3. Iapetus may have had a ring system during its formation due to its large Hill sphere, and the equatorial ridge could have then been produced by collisional accretion of this ring.

4. The ridge and the bulge could be the result of ancient convective overturn. This hypothesis states that the bulge is in isostatic equilibrium typical for terrestrial mountains. 

Source:

- NASA Cassini mission Page at Iapetus  

The Mission

Cassini sails low over the surface of Iapetus on approach to its close encounter with the enigmatic moon on Sept. 10, 2007. Its flight takes it over the rugged, mountainous ridge along the moon's equator, where ancient, impact battered peaks - some topping 10 kilometers (6 miles) in height -- are seen rising over the horizon and slipping beneath the spacecraft as it flies.
Frames used in this movie were acquired with the Cassini wide-angle camera on Sept. 10, 2007, as the intrepid robot soared past Iapetus (1,468 kilometers - 912 miles across), within a few thousand kilometers of the surface. Additional simulated images were inserted between the Cassini images in this movie in order to smooth the appearance of the movement, a scheme called interpolation.
The Cassini mission was launched on  October 15, 1997 at 8:43 UTC. This 20 years mission was programmed to end on September 15, 2017 by what is called The Grande Finale.
Source:
- NASA Cassini mission Page at Iapetus