Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
One can only assume that NASA is tiring of building orbiters and rovers, because one of their newest projects is a new, unmanned submarine designed to explore the liquid hydrocarbon seas of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, in a future mission.
As reported earlier this week by Gizmag, a conceptual design of the proposed submersible was recently unveiled by the US space agency at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium in Cocoa Beach, Florida. The submarine, which would be nuclear-powered and have side-scanning sonar, would be sent into space for a mission starting around 2040.
Remember the Titan?
Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the solar system that has an actual atmosphere, is home to three polar seas made up of methane and ethane. The gases of those seas are similar in composition to liquefied natural gas, the website explained, and it is the largest of these seas, Kraken Mare, which is intended destination of the submarine.
Titan (Credit: Cassini Imaging Team/SSI/JPL/ESA/NASA)
Discovered by Cassini in 2007, Kraken Mare is located in the arctic region of Titan between 60 and 80 degrees northern latitude. It covers more than 150,000 square miles (over 400,000 square kilometers). Some estimates state that it could be up to 525 feet (160 meters) deep, while others claim that it could actually reach depths of well over 1,000 feet (300 meters).
Titan even has tides due to the gravitational pull of Saturn, as well as a complex shoreline and deposits of a water-soluble mineral sediment known as evaporate, which forms as the result of the crystallization by evaporation of an aqueous solution. In order to better understand the moon, NASA is looking to explore its polar seas using the unmanned submersible vehicle.
Back to that submarine
The Titan submarine would weigh approximately one ton and would use electrically-powered turbines to travel around Kraken Mare, according to Extreme Tech. It would use a radiothermal Stirling generator in order to produce approximately one kilowatt of power, allowing it to reach speeds of up to one meter per second (3.6 km/h or 2.2 mph).
Due to its distance from Earth (approximately 80 light minutes), real-time control of the vehicle is impossible, the website added. NASA would have to wait more than two hours in order to get a response from each command. For that reason, it would be largely autonomous.
“For economy and simplicity, the conceptual submarine would not use an orbiter as a relay because an orbiter would need to be nuclear powered and include a propulsion system, which would greatly increase the cost and complexity of the mission,” Gizmag said.
“While operating, the submarine would surface for 16 hours per day for Earth communications during which it would study its surroundings using a mast camera,” the website added. “This is a bonus because the high latitudes mean any break in the Titanian clouds would be rewarded with spectacular views of Saturn on the horizon.”
At this point, it is unclear exactly what instruments the submarine would carry, but the data it collects would be transmitted using a planar phased-array antenna built into a large dorsal fin. Like with an terrestrial submarine, diving and surfacing will be controlled using ballast tanks.
“NASA doesn’t say much about the objectives of the Titan submarine, but it would probably be a full itinerary,” Gizmag concluded. “This would likely include the study of the structure and composition of Kraken Mare in terms of both its liquid and its sediment. Also, since Titan has an overabundance of organic chemicals, the submarine would be tasked with looking for traces of prebiotic compounds that could give clues as to how life began on Earth.”
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