The Submarine NASA Wants To Use To Explore Titan's
Methane Sea
NASA has long announced that it wants to explore the largest liquid methane/ethane sea on Saturn's biggest moon
Titan. The agency plans to create a
rough-tough submarine that can withstand extreme
conditions. Nasa has released a concept video of the robotic submersible and
has also revealed information about the potential mission at this year's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium.
NASA hopes to send the unmanned vehicle on a 90-day mission exploring the depths of Titan's
sea, collecting and analyzing samples .
"We have developed a practical design for a robot submersible to explore this exotic environment, drawing on experience in terrestrial AUVs/UUVs as well as spacecraft systems," NASA wrote in a recent summary.
The submarine, which engineers say would weigh a single ton, would likely be nuclear-powered. The submarine's unique shape would make the traditional strategies for depositing robotics landers and rovers on foreign planets unwise. Instead, the submarine drone would likely need to be delivered by a sort of space plane capable of soft water landing.
Once in the seas of Titan, the sub will
analyze the chemistry of Kraken Mare.
Diveing down to the seabed, where scientists predict there might be active hydrothermal vents.
"Measurement of the trace organic components of the sea, which perhaps may exhibit prebiotic chemical evolution, will be an important objective, and a benthic sampler would acquire
and analyze sediment from the seabed."
