Of course if it has a military application, you know DARPA thought of it first. Back in 2005 the feds funded research into 'XNAV', as they like to call it, to see if it could be used as a backup to GPS in case that system got jammed or went down during a time of war (do these guys ever think about anything other than war?).

But space scientists at PLANS think XNAV is the primary way for future spacecraft to navigate the stars. Using the system, robot spaceships could make their way safely and accurately through interstellar space without human intervention. It might pave the way for ultra-long missions to nearby stars and planets, while the human cargo snores peacefully away in hypersleep.

Source: PLANS conference website

Crowning a moon champion ain't as easy as it seems when Saturn alone has 59 of them. Fortunately the field got smaller when we considered five key points all moons should have on their resumes. It may be hard to stomach having Charon up there — it's questionable that it's even a moon — but someone had to be the goat.

And now, the winners in the individual categories:

BEST FEATURE NAME: Despite tons of creative feature names, Europa wins by a wide margin with Rathmore Chaos. It sounds like a level of Hell from Dante's Inferno, but like most of the outer system, the Chaos is a cold place. In fact it's a jumble of broken up ice that's evidence of the moon's active ice tectonics...and maybe a liquid water ocean below.

POTENTIAL FOR COLONIZATION: Phobos gave Earth's Luna a run for it's money; it's low gravity and proximity to the Red Planet make it worthy of it's full score. But in the end the deck's stacked against the Martian moon — the stated goal for NASA's next generation of manned spaceflight is to return to the moon...to stay.

ACTIVE GEOLOGY: This is a toughy. Uranus' moon Miranda doesn't have active geology, but scientists speculate that the whole moon may have been obliterated by impacts, then reassembled itself. You know, like T-1000 in Terminator 2. Charon, Triton, and Enceladus all look like they've got actively erupting cryovolcanoes of frigid ammonia, water, or liquid nitrogen which is cool, but it knocks Titan down a notch in uniqueness. Jupiter's Io wins for it's self sacrifice though; riddled with volcanoes, the firey moon is literally gutting itself, spewing 1 ton of sulfur dioxide into space every second.

MOVIE/BOOK: The hands-down winner is Earth's Moon, which has been in books and movies since the art forms were invented. It's hardly a fair fight, so the prize goes to Jupiter's Ganymede. The largest moon in the solar system (that's right, bigger than Titan!), it haunts tons of Philip K. Dick's books.

POTENTIAL FOR LIFE: Cryovolcanoes are going off all over the solar system's icy moons, and where there are volcanoes, there's liquid. Most of the liquid is in the form of methane, ammonia, nitrogen, or some other substance that Earth-life wouldn't want to swim in, but who knows what sort of strange aliens could be out there?

That said, Europa's icy shell is made of old-fashioned H2O, and features like Rathmore Chaos look a lot like shifting pack ice here on Earth, which floats on a big ocean of salty water, which in turn contains tons of critters. There's a good chance the same is true on Europa, meaning....

the prize for THE OVERALL AWESOMEST MOON IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM goes to EUROPA!!! Honorable mention to TItan for a strong showing, but it just goes to show...don't mess with the moon with the water oceans under the ice!

Sources: Lunar and Planetary Institute

The Cascadia Astrobiology Institute

Science Direct

WIkipedia

The Nine Planets Solar System Tour

1. Titan is the only moon with a thick, stable atmosphere. It's mostly made of nitrogen, with a decent helping of methane and other hydrocarbons. It's not exactly a breathable atmosphere, but it's still pretty cool. Even better, Titan has Earth-like weather. Wind and rain sweep the surface of Titan, shaping its geography and producing seasonal effects. Some scientists say Titan is a lot like a young Earth, only much colder.

2. Titan has dune seas. As much as 40 percent of the equatorial region might be covered by "sand" dunes hundreds of meters high. They probably aren't made of silicate particles the way Earth sand is. Rather, Titan's sand could be precipitated from the atmosphere. The dunes are sort of like semi-permanent snow drifts.

3. Titan has cryovolcanoes. There are mountains on Titan, along with evidence of volcanic activity. The interior of Titan probably doesn't support the same kind of heat and pressure that we find within the Earth. Instead, Titan's volcanoes might be the result of highly pressurized ice fracturing and spewing liquid water and ammonia into the atmosphere.

4. Titan has liquid features on the surface, like the hydrocarbon lakes pictured in the computer rendering above. Earlier Cassini data found proof of methane lakes in Titan's polar regions. Even more interesting, there might be an entire ocean lying beneath Titan's surface. This leads us to the best reason that Titan is awesome...

5. Titan might be our best bet for finding extraterrestrial life within our solar system. If the subsurface ocean exists, it would be made of liquid water and ammonia and would be warmer than the surface. The chemical makeup of the atmosphere and the active weather and geology have lead some scientists to propose that the conditions on Titan are right for the formation of primitive life. That's exciting. Image by Steven Hobbs via NASA.

Minton, who already created vector maps of the islands in this sea, writes:

I went ahead and digitized the shoreline of the unnamed methane sea . . . It is one of the largest bodies of liquid known to exist on this moon of Saturn. This body of liquid methane, ethane and nitrogen is about the size of Lake Superior.

The orange opacity of Titan's atmosphere makes the moon appear bigger than it actually is - astronomers have since distinguished between permanent cloud cover and surface, and downgraded it from the first- to the second-largest moon in our system, after Jupiter's satellite Ganymede.

Not until the flyby, in 2004, of the Cassini-Huygens mission could scientists confirm the speculation, first ignited by both Voyager missions and then heightened by Hubble observations, that Titan is the only heavenly body (save Earth) to contain large liquid surfaces - or seas, as non-astronomers would call them. For they seem a bit too small to be labelled oceans.

These seas, or lakes, most probably consisting of methane or another hydrocarbon, can be seen on this page of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

EVS-Islands [via Strange Maps]

Scientists began to suspect a global ocean when they saw some landmarks on Titan had shifted up to 19 miles between October 2004 and May 2007. The best explanation is a vast ocean, separating the planet's icy crust from its rocky center. The Cassini Space probe will fly within 620 miles of Titan, sample the atmosphere, and take pictures of the site where the Huygens probe landed.

Above, you can see Titan's dunes. Below, there are dunes from an Earth desert. The sand formations are remarkably similar. Images via NASA.