Titan: Facts (2024)

Vast regions of dark dunes stretch across Titan’s landscape, primarily around the equatorial regions. The "sand" in these dunes is composed of dark hydrocarbon grains thought to look something like coffee grounds. In appearance, the tall, linear dunes are not unlike those seen in the desert of Namibia in Africa. Titan has few visible impact craters, meaning its surface must be relatively young and some combination of processes erases evidence of impacts over time. Earth is similar in that respect as well; craters on our planet are erased by the relentless forces of flowing liquid (water, in Earth's case), wind, and the recycling of the crust via plate tectonics. These forces are present on Titan as well, in modified forms. In particular, tectonic forces—the movement of the ground due to pressures from beneath—appear to be at work on the icy moon, although scientists do not see evidence of plates like on Earth.