Titan’s deep slot canyons were first suggested in a 2016 study of Vid Flumina, Titan’s version of the Nile River. Here, liquid hydrocarbons flow a whopping 249 miles (400 km) until they reach Ligeia Mare, one of Titan’s largest lakes. The river has formed canyons that reach some 1,870 feet deep (570 meters) and stretch more than half a mile (1 km) wide, with sloping walls. As Gregg and Sakimoto point out, these dimensions are consistent with slot canyons on Earth, though with less extreme slopes.

To see if the canyons on Titan formed similarly to slot canyons on Earth, Gregg and her colleague used computer simulations to test a wide array of erosion scenarios on Titan, helping to determine what some of these hard-to-suss-out features are.

“Given the morphologic similarities, it may mean that Titan’s slot canyons form in a similar way [to Earth]: infrequent, heavy flooding,” Gregg says. “That doesn’t necessarily require a long time. These could be ‘active’ slot canyons on Titan.”

And, like Earth, that flooding could be fed by Titan’s weather. The moon’s weather system is still poorly understood. Astronomers recently spotted evidence of recent rains falling in Titan’s northern hemisphere using archival Cassini data.

The same way Earth’s seasons are dependent on our planet’s orbit around the Sun, Titan’s seasons are subject to Saturn’s orbit around the sun. That’s because the moon is tidally locked to its planet, so the same side constantly faces Saturn. This gives Titan an interesting confluence of factors that cause its seasonal behaviors. Seasons only change there every 7.5 years, which means Cassini didn’t get a chance to witness all four seasons. So we don’t know enough to figure out when and where this flooding might come from.

Further investigation of these features would require a return to the Saturn system via an orbiter or lander — though some fans of Utah’s Zion National Park would likely be up to the challenge of hiking the slightly-less-Narrows of Titan. There is one potential mission there, known as the Titan Dragonfly, which would send a drone to fly through the thick atmosphere of Titan, studying the strange and rich geology of the planet-sized moon.

But sweeping through the canyons might prove a little dangerous. Still, we can dream.