NASA is a Swiftie?
The evidence says yes!
NASA channeled its inner Taylor Swift fan with its latest Instagram post on Saturn’s moon — Titan.
The space agency shared the post with the title “Lavender Haze,” a nod to the singer’s hit from the album Midnights.
Lavender Haze might also possibly be the soundtrack for NASA’s Dragonfly mission, which is set to explore Titan and study whether life can potentially be supported.
Swifties were quick to comment on the post as they wondered whether NASA is as big a fan of the hit-maker as they are.
“Nasa is a Swiftieeeee???” one asked, while another said, “NASA in her swifty era.”
“i just wanna staaay in that lavender haaazzzee,” another sang in the comments section.
"Everyone is a swiftie y'all," the internet said as NASA shared a post with the title 'Lavender Haze'
Image credits: NASA
One said, “NASA being a swiftie wasn't on my 2024 bingo,”
“Everyone is a swiftie y'all,” another declared.
NASA made the Taylor Swift reference as it spoke about Titan, which is no small-fry type of moon. It out-sizes the planet of Mercury and is the only known moon with a thick atmosphere.
This atmosphere, kind of like a heavy blanket of gases, is mostly made of nitrogen, which is also the most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere.
Titan has always fascinated scientists for its Earth-like properties, such as having rivers, lakes, and seas across its surface. But these rivers and lakes are not made up of water like on Earth; they are instead made of methane and ethane.
On Earth, methane and ethane are gases, but on Titan, they are liquid because of the freezing temperatures that hover around -290 ºF (-179ºC).
“Larger than the planet Mercury and the only known moon in our Solar System with a thick atmosphere, Saturn’s moon Titan is one of the most promising places to look for life beyond Earth. Rivers, lakes, and seas of methane and ethane exist on Titan’s frozen surface beneath its hazy nitrogen-based atmosphere,” NASA wrote on Instagram.
The space agency also noted that its Dragonfly mission, set for a July 2028 launch, will explore Titan “to study whether [it] could potentially support life.”
“Life would likely look very different than here on Earth, as Titan’s temperature hovers around a frigid -290 ºF (-179 ºC) with an atmospheric pressure 60 times greater than our home planet,” NASA wrote. “Set to launch no earlier than July 2028 and arrive in the mid-2030s, our Dragonfly mission will explore Titan, flying to many different locations to study whether they could potentially support life.”
This isn’t the first time NASA has made a Taylor Swift reference in its posts. In 2022, the space agency shared a post about the remains of a supernova, which is a massive explosion that occurs at the end of a star's life cycle.
“Question…? Are you a Swiftie?” NASA has previously asked its followers
NASA explained the description of the image: “Blank space as black as #Midnight is dotted with tiny white stars across the image. A swirling labyrinth of colors of blue, green, yellow, purple, and red makes up the center of the photo surrounding the neutron star in bright blue.”
“Question…? Are you a Swiftie?” NASA asked its followers in the same post.
“We are too!” the space agency continued. “Our Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory telescope and several other X-ray telescopes observed one of the most extreme rotating neutron stars or pulsars – ever detected in 2016.”
“This composite image shows the remains of a supernova, around 9,000 light-years from Earth, in three bands of X-ray light detected by @NASAChandraXRay, with low energy X-rays in red, medium in green, and the highest in blue,” the post added.