A automaton ship could before long be sailing across the massive bodies of liquid that dust the arctic region of Titan , Saturn ’s moon . Titan has huge lake , but they ’re made up of ethane , methane and propane .
In the plan drafted by geologistEllen Stofan , with financial support from NASA , a capsule would splash down in one of these northerly lakes — probably Ligeia Mare or Kraken Mare — with a “ Lake Lander , ” known as the Titan Mare Explorer ( or TiME for brusk . ) Because solar power is in brusk supply in Titan ’s standard pressure , which is full of methane rain and far from the Sun , TiME would use a new kind of nuclear power cadre known as the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator ( ASRG ) . The lander would n’t need sails to zoom along , push by Titan ’s nitrogen nothingness , but it would have a gasconade ’s nest support a camera , to make headway a better vantage point .
Titan ’s medium temperature of -292 Fahrenheit are enough to keep those methane / ethane / propane seas liquid state . Stofan told Space . Com :
It ’s very cold , but the technical challenges are n’t as big as you might recall . land in liquid is a lot more forgiving than on land .
Now that Stofan has funding to pull up her plans , she is crafting a proposal for NASA to fund the mission under its Discovery programme — and if that gets approved , our nuclear windjammer could research Titan ’s seas as before long as 2022 . Strohan ’s report ( PDF ) ishere . [ Space.comandThe Register ]
outer space
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