File:NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Finds Ingredient of Household Plastic in Space (10463744825).jpg

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[File Photo: Saturn's orange moon Titan peeks from behind two of Saturn's rings. Small, battered Epimetheus, another of Saturn's 62 moons, appears just above the rings.]

Story details: NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected propylene, a chemical used to make food-storage containers, car bumpers and other consumer products, on Saturn's moon Titan.

This is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than Earth.

A small amount of propylene was identified in Titan's lower atmosphere by Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS). This instrument measures the infrared light, or heat radiation, emitted from Saturn and its moons in much the same way our hands feel the warmth of a fire.

Propylene is the first molecule to be discovered on Titan using CIRS. By isolating the same signal at various altitudes within the lower atmosphere, researchers identified the chemical with a high degree of confidence. Details are presented in a paper in the Sept. 30 edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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

Read more: 1.usa.gov/17MrtXs

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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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Source NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Finds Ingredient of Household Plastic in Space
Author NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA

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This image was originally posted to Flickr by NASA Goddard Photo and Video at https://flickr.com/photos/24662369@N07/10463744825. It was reviewed on 17 September 2016 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

17 September 2016

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current20:54, 17 September 2016Thumbnail for version as of 20:54, 17 September 20161,010 × 736 (29 KB)Vanished Account Byeznhpyxeuztibuo (talk | contribs)Transferred from Flickr via Flickr2Commons

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