"The existence of any vesicles on Titan would demonstrate an increase in order and complexity, which are conditions necessary for the origin of life."

Titan is unique in our solar system: it’s the only world besides Earth known to have stable liquids on its surface.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon and the second-largest in the solar system, is a world unlike any other. With a dense atmosphere, an active surface, and lakes filled with liquid methane and ethane, Titan presents an alien environment that’s both fascinating and hazardous.

Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, says that finding vesicles on Titan would show an important step toward creating life: increasing chemical complexity and organization. It would also prove that life’s building blocks don’t always need water—they might form in other environments too.

For decades, scientists believed water was the essential cradle for life. But new research suggests life’s building blocks might be present in one of the most unlikely places: Titan. This frigid world where methane rains from the sky has lakes of liquid hydrocarbons and temperatures that rarely climb above -180°C.

NASA research has shown that cell-like compartments called vesicles could form naturally in the lakes of Saturn's moon Titan.