Abstract
Saturn’s moon Titan has a surface that is dominated by molecular materials, much of which are photochemically produced in the moon’s atmosphere. This outlook reviews the potential minerals that would be expected to form on the surface and subsurface of Titan from these molecular solids. We seek to classify them and look toward how the future study of these minerals will enhance our understanding of this planetary body. The classification uses the basis of intermolecular interactions, with the materials grouped into “Molecular solids,” “Molecular co-crystals,” and “Hydrates” classes alongside speculation on other possible classes of potential Titan minerals.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge ideas and advice from the participants in the “Do not Follow (Just) the Water: Does Life Occur in Non-Aqueous Media?” workshop organized by the W.M. Keck Institute for Space Studies as well as R. Hazen for his review of the article. R.H., M.C., M.M., and T.V. gratefully acknowledge support from NASA’s Solar System Workings program. Part of this work has been conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract to NASA. Government sponsorship acknowledged. Crystal structure visualizations were drawn with the Mercury 3.7 program (Macrae et al. 2008).
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