Titan Balloon Mission Being Drafted

eldavojohn writes "After Huygens & Cassini corrected our assumptions about Titan (a moon of Saturn), scientists are now debating about their next mission, and one of the choices is the Titan and Saturn System Mission. What makes Titan a good choice? 'Although the atmosphere of Titan is filled with a smoggy orange hydrocarbon haze, it is primarily composed of nitrogen — just like Earth's. In fact, Astrobiologists think Titan's atmosphere may be quite similar to how the Earth's was billions of years ago, before life on our planet generated oxygen.' We also discussed its liquid hydrocarbons earlier this year."

Re:Terraforming

[Shakrai]

we might be able to put various carbon compounds or other substances to change the concentration of atmospheric compounds to make it more amenable for life.

The atmosphere is only part of the problem though. Titan's distance from the Sun limits the amount of energy that the moon receives -- the negative 292 degree temperatures (F) would seem to be an issue even if the atmosphere was completely Earth like.

Re:Democratic

[SleepingWaterBear]

Actually, we taste like pork.

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Or at least so they say [reference.com]

Re:What about the Asteroid Belt?

[CheshireCatCO]

Asteroid belt objects are unlikely to hit the Earth during the course of the human race's existence. They're in fairly stable, roughly circular orbits that don't cross Earth's orbit. You're more worried about NON-Belt asteroids and, perhaps more so, comets.

In any case, it isn't a zero-sum game: funding Titan research doesn't mean that asteroids don't get studied.

Meanwhile, we *do* have projects to catalog all such asteroids *and* a mission to the asteroid belt in play right now. So what's your complaint?

Titan vs. Europa

[Dr. Scatterplot]

The balloon aspect is indeed cool, especially since the balloon will communicate by radio with a raft floating in one of Titan's methane/ethane lakes, and an orbiter that will solve some of the mysteries Cassini has revealed. The other mission being studied would explore the Galilean satellites, tackling questions raised by the Galileo orbiter beginning more than a decade ago. Given its abundant tidal heating, possible surface oxidation by solar wind particles (think food), liquid water ocean, and possible hydrothermal systems, Jupiter's moon Europa may be a better target in the search for life. Here are the mission descriptions from NASA, with links to the details: http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/europajupitersystemmissionejsm/jupitereuropaorbiter/ [nasa.gov] http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/titansaturnsystemmissiontssm/ [nasa.gov]

Re:What about the Asteroid Belt?

[Anonymous Coward]

There already are several telescopes dedicated soley to studying and discovering asteroids. We currently discover about three times as many asteroids per year as we did 10 years ago, and probably about 10 times as many as we did 15 years ago. In the first six months of 2008, we discovered on average one every ~11 hours.

At the same time, we've also already discovered most of the asteroids a kilometer in diameter or bigger. Despite the improved instrumentation and computer automated searching, only 12 such asteroids were discovered in the first six months of 2008, compared to a current catalog of 760 (1000 total estimated). More info here. [nasa.gov]

More to the point, a mission to Titan (or Jupiter...NASA is still deciding) is not exclusive of searching for asteroids. NASA has funding for both programs, and contrary to the claim that NASA ignored a directive from Congress to search for NEO's, they've been actively at it for the last 10 years, and will continue it for the foreseeable future. In fact, in 2003 they began making preparations to expand it further. The current goal is to catalog 90% of the objects 140m in diameter or larger within the next 20 years, whereas impacts from such objects are believed to occur roughly once every 1000 years.