Concept Aquatic Rover May Explore a Lake On Titan 47
cylonlover writes "Titan is Saturn's largest moon, and it's said to be one of the most Earth-like celestial bodies in the Solar System. It has a thick atmosphere, and is covered with a network of seas, lakes and rivers – albeit ones made up of liquid hydrocarbons instead of water. Now, a team of scientists are proposing sending a boat-like probe to Titan, that would travel across its largest lake. The probe, which is still in the concept stage, is known as TALISE – that stands for Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer, although it's also an Iroquois word for 'beautiful water.' The plan calls for it to land in the middle of Ligeia Mare, which is near the moon's north pole. It would then set out on a six-month to one-year mission, taking scientific measurements and obtaining samples as it makes its way to the closest shore."
That would be very cool (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:That would be very cool (Score:4, Informative)
The previous proposed Titan floater mission (TiME) was rejected last month by NASA. Since this different design is being developed in Europe, I would assume they would pitch the idea to the ESA. There are two big problems: 1) the ESA doesn't have experience with RTGs and 2) the ESA doesn't have experience sending and controlling spacecraft to the outer planets. The best that they have done is the Huygens drop probe that was attached to Cassini and the ESA contribution to Ulysses. It is doable, but it would be extremely expensive since there is no in-house experience. Roskosmos isn't an option since they, like the ESA, have no RTG or outer planet exploration experience.
Only a NASA partnership could get this done with a reasonable budget and NASA doesn't want to do it. In my opinion, this design is nice, but it isn't going to happen unless NASA gets a big budget boost.
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Or ESA has to convince NASA people with experience to come over and work for them.
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RTG not needed (Score:2)
Plenty of things do fine without solar, nuclear, or air. The obvious example is the Space Shuttle, using fuel cells. Swedish submarines use cryogenic liquid oxygen with diesel fuel to heat a Stirling engine. German submarines use hydrogen fuel cells.
If you wanted to bet that the lake really is liquid methane/ethane, you could just bring an oxidizer. You could even run a very fuel-rich piston engine.
Non-RTG nuclear is also possible. You have an entire lake of cooling fluid. You can use it as cooling for a tr
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Anyway, RTGs are not a rocket science. They're basically are lumps of Plutonium or other isotope surrounded by thermocouples.
"enough power" (Score:2)
You're getting greedy. Make do with less. Each moment on the surface is less valuable than the preceeding moment. An hour on the surface, without even moving, is pretty damn useful. It probably gets you 90% of the value of spending a year roving around.
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Oh God am I depressed that NASA's TiME mission didn't get funded! It would have been ten times cooler than the mission they ended up with. Discovery class missions were meant to be riskier than other larger classes of missions. But as the Discovery mission starts get fewer and fewer, inevitably the tolerance to risk goes down.
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Yes is does. Of course any water that is found there will be frozen to the point of being indistinguishable from rock.
On that point, shouldn't the thing be called a methanic rover?
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They may have to design it for a land-based landing in case it misses the liquid target. Plus it may hit an iceberg or the like.
(Hitting an iceberg on Titan...ic, pun fun.)
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Icebergs exist because of a property of water that is somewhat unique, where the solid form has a lower density than the liquid form. That is exaggerated even further with water because the "solid" water (Arctic ice sheets as well as calving from glaciers) is generally free of salt but the salt concentration in liquid water tends to have an even higher density than ordinary fresh water... giving additional buoyancy thus letting those "icebergs" float in the liquid of the oceans on the Earth.
That we live in
Why... (Score:4, Interesting)
... don't we have a rover on the bottom of our own planets oceans?
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Good question. The answer might have something to do with pressure. If you're curious, you have some interesting reading in store. Another question: why would we want to explore there? That can get even more interesting.
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It turns out to be really hard to comunicate with stuff on the bottom of the ocean. Salt water absorbs RF like crazy at useful frequencies. ULF works but has an abysmal data rate. This means you either hang your submersible on a tether or let it go black and operate fully independently for long periods and surface to report back.
There are a ton of unmanned craft using both methods.
Not the first boat on Titan (Score:4, Informative)
The Europe-built Huygens probe that landed on Titan a few years ago was designed to float in case it had landed on liquid (solid land by luck of the draw). However, it only was designed for a very limited life-time in order to keep it small.
Most "earth-like"? (Score:2)
That's based on a rather narrow and specific definition of what it means to be "earth-like". In human terms, there are many other bodies on the solar system on which we (and any other kind of life as we know it) could live on far easier than Titan.
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Titan's atmosphere is certainly closer to Earth's in general physical properties (mass and composition) than any other atmosphere in the Solar System. I would probably place Venus' next closest.
I also think it is distinctive for being a terrestrial body with significant amounts of liquid matter on the surface. All other bodies only have surface-level liquids as temporary phenomenon.
If you consider a basic concept of having "land, sea, and air", Titan rates closer to Earth than anything else I can think of
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Titan is the only other place in the Solar System that we know of with an active hydrological system of rivers, channels, rain, and active erosion from that liquid. While not a perfect analogy to the Earth, the mere fact that some other place in the universe that we can also get to with existing technology exists is plenty of reason for going there alone. That a second hydrological system can be used for comparison enables all sorts of scientific theories to be tested simply because it allows for comparis
Missing something (Score:2)
Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer
TALISE
Somebody failed with the acronyms. Is that with or without the P? Either way the word does not seem to exist and the closest match is a congenital defect.......
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It's also an Iroquois word for "beautiful water."
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I think we should create the Association For Removal Of Broken Acronyms (AZRABOA) which also means 'WTF ??' in ancient Klingon
Boat-like? (Score:3, Interesting)
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The amount and type of power needed for a sub might pose a problem without something on the surface. Perhaps the first priority might be to get there and see how long we can last, then use the boat as a relay for communications or something.
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RTFM.
"rover -d OPTION
Deploy equipment (if specified with --exec, else --test is used) from toolbox; OPTIONS are sonar, periscope, depth sensor, temp sensor (...) fishing rod"
Duh!
Boat-like probe (Score:1)
They're calling it the Titanic.
Europa would be way bettter.. (Score:2)
I am still waiting for a Europa ocean-going mission. That's the best chance of finding other life in the solar system. We need some sort of easy way to melt through the ice layer, though. (Maybe slowly, though radioactivity?). I suppose that would make the probe more of a submarine than a boat though.
TiME (Score:3)
Accuracy of proposed weight. (Score:2)
I'm going to complain here, because no-one else cares...
One of my pet hates is that when the media publishes a measurement, they will give both metric and imperial, and will calculate it to ridiculous significant figures.
For instance, this imaginary robot might weigh, you know, round about 100 kilo - which is 220.5 lbs! Yep, they know know the measurements to the nearest 10th of a pound, but coincidentally it happens to be a really round figure in metric terms.
Rant over. Feel free to ignore.
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1 foot is exactly 12 inches.
1 pound is exactly 0.45359237 kg.
Significant figures do not apply to unit definitions, as I recall... :)
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100 kilograms == 220 pounds.... give or take.
I agree that uncalled for rounding when doing unit conversions in popular media articles is something that needs to be mentioned and criticized. The point is that the author is attempting to give a comparison for people unfamiliar with the other measurement unit into something they are familiar. They should stick with a couple digits of accuracy and get the correct order of magnitude.
Would they do the same thing if they were trying to convert the price of somet
This should be a Duck. (Score:2)