Formation and evolution of the Solar System depletion period that brought the asteroid belt down close to its present mass is thought to have followed when Jupiter and Saturn entered a temporary 2:1 orbital resonance (see below). The inner Solar System's period of giant impacts probably played a role in the Earth acquiring its current water content (~6 kg) from the early asteroid belt. Water is too volatile to have been present at Earth's formation and must have been subsequently delivered from outer, colder parts of the Solar System. The water was probably delivered by planetary embryos and small planetesimals thrown out of the asteroid belt by
Colonization of the outer Solar System perhaps the most advantageous locale in the outer Solar System for colonization. He said, "In certain ways, Titan is the most hospitable extraterrestrial world within the Solar System for human colonization." A widely published expert on terraforming, Christopher McKay, is also a co-investigator on the Huygens probe that landed on Titan in January 2005. The surface of Titan is mostly uncratered and thus inferred to be very young and active, and probably composed of mostly water ice, and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons (methane/ethane) in its polar regions. While the temperature is cryogenic (95 K) it should be able to support