Planetary Science and Exploration Seminar, Valerio Poggiali: “Titan by Radar: Seas, Surface Properties, and the Road to Dragonfly”

Titan’s dense atmosphere conceals a remarkably Earth-like landscape shaped by dunes, rivers, lakes, seas, and possible remnants of past hydrologic environments. The Cassini RADAR investigation provided our first detailed view of this surface and enabled measurements extending well beyond imaging. In this talk, I will review how radar sounding was used to measure the depths and constrain the composition of Titan’s northern seas, as well as how Cassini’s bistatic radar observations are revealing the roughness and dielectric properties of both liquid and solid surfaces. I will then discuss ongoing and proposed investigations of radar backscatter, Titan’s widespread plains, possible paleoseas, and candidate cenote-like depressions, illustrating how the Cassini archive continues to generate new scientific questions nearly a decade after the mission’s conclusion. Finally, I will look ahead to NASA’s Dragonfly mission, whose in-situ measurements and aerial exploration will connect Cassini’s global remote-sensing perspective with the composition, physical properties, and geological history of Titan’s surface.
 

Valerio Poggiali is a Senior Research Associate at Cornell University’s Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science and Department of Astronomy. A planetary scientist and radar engineer, he investigates Titan and other icy worlds using radar remote sensing, electromagnetic scattering models, and statistical inversion techniques. His work has included studies of the bathymetry and composition of Titan’s seas and flooded canyons, the physical properties of its plains and polar terrains, and bistatic radar observations of liquid and solid surfaces. He received a NASA Group Achievement Award as a member of the Cassini RADAR Science Team and currently conducts research that extends Cassini’s scientific legacy while providing context for the exploration of Titan by NASA’s Dragonfly mission.