NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Detects Plastic Ingredient on Saturn's Moon, Titan [VIDEO]

NASA's unmanned Cassini spacecraft has detected traces of chemical that is used to make household plastic like food storage containers and other consumer products, in the smoggy atmosphere of Saturn's moon, Titan.

A latest announcement by NASA claims that its Cassini spacecraft has detected small amount propylene in the lower atmosphere of Titan. This chemical also called propene, is used to make food storage containers like Tupper wear boxes, car bumpers and other consumer products. This is for the first time that an ingredient of plastic has been detected on any moon or planet other than Earth.

Cassini spacecrafts composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) detected the traces of Propylene and this is the first molecule that has been discovered in Saturn's moon, Titan. The manner in which CIRS measures infrared light or the heat radiation that is generated by Saturn and its moon is similar to how the human hands feel the warmth of a fire.

Based on this unique thermal fingerprint, CIRS can detect a particular gas present in the Titan's lower layers of atmosphere. It can easily detect the heat signal that is produced by certain chemicals but is extremely challenging to isolate a particular chemical from the range of other signals that are emitted by other gases present.

The NASA researchers isolated the same signal in various altitudes within the lower atmosphere and confidently claim that traces of propylene is present in Titan's atmosphere.

"This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene. That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom - that's polypropylene," Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the paper, said in a press statement.

The detection of this chemical propylene completes the mysterious find made by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft that flew by Saturn and Titan in 1980. During its journey in Titan's hazy brownish atmosphere, Voyager detected many gases as hydrocarbon - the organic compound that naturally occurs in crude oil on Earth. On further investigating Tiatn's atmosphere with space and ground based instruments, only propylene remained elusive. But CIRS helped to confirm the existence of propylene.

Hydrocarbons on Titan are formed after sunlight breaks apart methane, the gas that is present in large volume in the Titan's atmosphere. Propane belongs to the three carbon family. In Titan's atmosphere Voyager has detected the one and two carbon families, but propane the heaviest member and propyne the lightest member were among the three carbon family that Voyager detected. 

"This measurement was very difficult to make because propylene's weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals," said Michael Flasar, Goddard scientist and principal investigator for CIRS. "This success boosts our confidence that we will find still more chemicals long hidden in Titan's atmosphere."

Prior to this, Cassini mass spectrometer has detected propylene in the upper atmosphere.

"I am always excited when scientists discover a molecule that has never been observed before in an atmosphere," said Scott Edgington, Cassini's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "This new piece of the puzzle will provide an additional test of how well we understand the chemical zoo that makes up Titan's atmosphere."

This amazing find is presented in a paper in the Sept. 30 edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.