Titan Activity Mystifies Scientists

This story from SpaceDaily.com makes the case for me that a mission to Titan should be on someone's agenda. I suggest they eventually place multiple probes. But start simple with something similar to our present spy satellites. Multiple capabilities, like weather studies, surface mapping and spectral analysis, but nothing too technical or complicated that the mission takes us 40 years to put together.
Like Rutan said, if NASA can just slap a capsule on top of a solid rocket booster, why aren't they doing it already?

Anyway, the story offers a great picture, some great links and a planetary mystery that could drive us on that mission sooner rather than later. Here's a snippet from the story:

Saturn's moon Titan shows an unusual bright spot that has scientists mystified. The spot, approximately the size and shape of West Virginia, is just southeast of the bright region called Xanadu and is visible to multiple instruments on the Cassini spacecraft.
The 483-kilometer-wide (300-mile) region may be a "hot" spot - an area possibly warmed by a recent asteroid impact or by a mixture of water ice and ammonia from a warm interior, oozing out of an ice volcano onto colder surrounding terrain.
Other possibilities for the unusual bright spot include landscape features holding clouds in place or unusual materials on the surface.


I'm convinced it's a life form. What about you? A giant methane breathing moss, or a grove of ice-eating lichen. We won't know if we don't go. Check out the Cassini-Huygens homepage for more information.