Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Sailing Titan's Seas?

NASA may be looking at sending a nuclear-powered ship to Saturn's gigantic moon Titan to sail one of the many lakes of ethane there. Most lakes on Titan are fairly small, but two rival North America's Great Lakes in size. One of those would make a relatively easy target.

Such a probe would need to be nuclear powered because solar cells wouldn't work that far from the Sun, especially given Titan's dense atmosphere, and batteries would only provide hours of power. NASA's nuclear power generators depend on radioactive decay to produce heat and energy; they are not nuclear reactors. The generators could power the ship for months.

The same Discovery-class mission that would deliver the ship might also deliver a balloon to ride the currents of Titan's active atmosphere. The moon is incredibly cold, but it has weather patterns and organics. Scientists liken it to the early Earth.

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