NASA to Send a Submarine to Titan’s Sea

February 16, 2015 Posted by Staff

It was revealed by NASA that it wants to send a submarine to Titan’s sea, Kracken Mare, to explore it and send back data. Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and it is around 2 billion miles away from Earth.

NASA recently made public its intention to send a robotic submarine to Titan in order for it to explore the large lakes of ethane and methane. The timeline of this new mission was not made available by NASA, but scientists believe it’s going to be at least half a decade before the NASA submarine will explore Titan’s seas.

The main reason why exploring Titan is so important is that Titan is very similar to a very young Earth. Titan is also the only moon in our solar system to have a significant atmosphere that also possess its own methane cycle, just like Earth’s water cycle.

Yes, this means that on Titan it doesn’t rain water, but methane and the entire moon has seas, lakes and rivers made out of methane. 10 years ago, in 2005, the Europeans Huygens landed on Titan and sent precious images of the moon’s landscape. It was launched in 1997.

The idea that NASA would send a submarine to Titan’s seas was showcased at this year’s NIAC Symposium (Innovative Advanced Concepts). The concept was presented by NASA Glenn’s COMPASS and the researchers from Applied Research Lab.

The concept presents a possible mission to the largest sea on Titan, called Kracken Mare. The submarine NASA would design and manufacture would be autonomous and capable of traveling for 90 days and 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers), exploring the methane sea.

The machine will be powered by a radioisotope generator, a source that takes the heat made by radioactive pellets and transforms it into electricity.

Communication with Earth is not going to be possible while the submarine is underwater, so NASA put forth the idea that the submarine would have to come up to the surface regularly to transmit its precious data.

The entire concept, while extremely exciting, is going to difficult to become reality. One of the reasons for that is that Kracken Mare is a very unstable sea and there is even evidence for tides. The sea is also extremely cold, at around -298 degrees Fahrenheit (-183 degrees Celsius).

Image Source: Space

Nick

The entire concept, while extremely exciting, is going to *be* difficult to become reality
- Jakob Stagg
  
  Exciting? They must be doing some pretty exotic drugs.
texlovera

Good lord, does this “newspaper” have anyone on staff well-versed in proper English grammar, much less writing a story in a comprehensible fashion?
- Jakob Stagg
  
  Writing must have been outsourced to save money.
  - Andrew
    
    Don’t blame them, the message is important after all.
- Mr. Shadow
  
  Oh boy, go read a book and keep your opinion to yourself.
  - texlovera
    
    Hey everyone, Ben Roethlisberger is here!
    - Mr. Shadow
      
      Oh boy a sports reference.
      - texlovera
        
        Beclownment ahoy!
observation

Communication with Earth is not going to be possible while the submarine is underwater?
Undermethane, you mean?
Andrew

This will be hard for sure….
Jakob Stagg

Save time and money. Just burn a mountain of money out in the street for years. At least there would be an opportunity to roast hot dogs and marshmallows.
- Andrew
  
  Haha that’s a good one Jakob, indeed to much money thrown away just for some ,,science discovery,,; with so many poor people…
  - John Ostrander
    
    Poor people can get jobs, I did, my family did… then we stopped being so poor, and because less poor. It’s a fact, and it works.
- John Ostrander
  
  S’mores. Actually, this is a drop in the bucket when it comes to government funding, especially with spaceX and Virgin on board…. commercial space flight is private money, and they are doing more and more of the work.
  
  Makes you think, NASA is on a shoestring budget of about $5B annually, and they run almost no missions…. and it was $5B before and we were going into space all the time, and SPaceX is going into space for under $200M, and India went to Mars on less than $80M….. makes you wonder about government spending in any areas?
John Ostrander

“Communication with Earth is not going to be possible while the submarine is underwater…”

There’s water on Titan? Wouldn’t it be frozen, at -180 degrees C? WOW!!
- Mr. Shadow
  
  It is methane, you didn’t read the article. Did you?
  - Andrew
    
    But he wrote ,,new,, instead of ,,knew,, hahaha
    - John Ostrander
      
      ??
      - Andrew
        
        I mean, Erik above was criticizing and he wrote ”I think they meant to say, undermethane, but they new the common word was underwater,, – new instead of knew
  - John Ostrander
    
    No way!! THere’s water in the methane???
    
    (Read the article sir, it says “when the submarine is underwater…” how could it be underwater in a sea of methane?!?)
    - Mr. Shadow
      
      Underwater is a broad term used to mean submersed in liquid. Grow up.
      - John Ostrander
        
        So… if I get buried in molten lava ( a liquid, albeit high temperature) that I am underwater?
        
        When did the English language get ever so simplified that instead of LOL, ROTFLMFAO and TTFN and other abbreviations to one word, e.g. “water” meaning anything that is in the liquid state?
      - Mr. Shadow
        
        Well, you wouldn’t get “buried” in molted lava. You would be immersed in molten lava. Bury being a term meant for being completely covered by some form of a solid not liquid. So get your own act together before you question my English skills.
        
        The English has many examples of oversimplifications. These being sewer…flight…ground…sky…ect. You get the picture. Words have multiple meanings and multiple uses in point of fact. You are arguing semantics based off the principle that the English language is an absolute instead of an ever change form of communication.
      - John Ostrander
        
        I suppose you got me there. English has many simplifications but…. I still fail to see how “water” equates to “liquid”. So please don’t question MY English skills, or in this case my SCIENCE knowledge.
        
        So to rephrase, if I were IMMERSED or SUBMERGED in molten lava (a liquid) I would therefore be “underwater” by your interpretation of modern written English language? Kind of like the probe being “underwater” in a sea of liquid methane I mean…. these are completely…totally different things. They could not be much more dissimilar (yes, that is a word).
        
        I guess you don’t know as much about the English language as you think, I’m not arguing symantecs, you are. I’m arguing that Jouranalism is dead, and any competent fifth grader would have a fighting chance at replacing most journalists in the present day, based on grammar alone, spelling a close second. I do speak in terms of “fifth grader” based on my memories, I am somewhat certain today’s fifth grader could not possibly do a better job as 1/3 are illiterate, 1/2 can’t read a clock, and one out of 3 doesn’t know their home address, I would not trust them to compose an intelligible piece of writing. BUT they can pass standardized tests.
        
        It’s a very sad state we find ourselves in today.
      - Mr. Shadow
        
        Water equates to liquid because it is a liquid. And it is universal. But I get your point, you are mad that the world isn’t turning into what you think it should be and so you revert to petty arguments on generalitIes with grammatical semantics.
        
        I hate to be the one to tell you this. But the world and the English language doesn’t deal in absolutes. Something an illiterate 5th grader already knows.
      - John Ostrander
        
        So… the English language is not absolute, and water is not water except when it is methane in liquid form, I think I’m catching on here…. we are living in a society where a language does not actually exist, and I can go swimming in lava, because after all lava is a liquid, and water is liquid so lava is water.
        
        You were a supporter of common core curriculum weren’t you? THis is one of the reasons it is failing, because in math you can answer however you want and it is not wrong, and you are trying to spin written language that way also. I’m sorry sir, but it never has worked that way. While you may live in a world where people speak a language that twins teach each other, I live here in a land where English is spoken, and mostly understood. My point was completely missed that journalism is dead so there it is….. I’ll even write it bigger for clarity: JOURNALISM IS DEAD.
        
        Meanwhile, you are a English expert, so how did psychology play into all of this? I’m Mad? Who are you, my ex wife? She thought I was mad all the time (hence the “ex” part of that) anyway…. this was a pleasant and humorous discourse, but I really have other things to do. I do mean humorous, I have made screen clips and passed them around… we are having quite a few laughs. I surround myself with educated folk, and do things like this for my own amusement.
        
        Thanks for your participation, it made my week go faster. Cheers!
      - Mr. Shadow
        
        Yawn….good for you and going off on tangents. Your point is invalid since you can’t seem to focus on the relevant. If you wan’t to spout about journalism being dead simply because of small grammatical errors or language absolutes based off a set of criteria you made up in your head. Then go for it.
        
        The sad thing is, things will still chug along regardless of your whining. Sorry the world didn’t give you what you think it owed you.
- erik
  
  I think they meant to say, undermethane, but they new the common word was underwater, so went with that hoping the readers would remember that Titan has methan, and not water.
  - John Ostrander
    
    I would have simply said “when the probe is submerged”. Journalism is dead…..
    - erik
      
      Woah now!!! No probe is getting Submerged anywhere!!!
      - John Ostrander
        
        Submerged
        
        1. under the surface of water or any other enveloping medium; inundated.
        
        probe /prəʊb/ Noun
        1. something that probes, examines, or tests (AKA this submarine)
      - Daniel Olson
        
        I got the reference Erik, don’t worry.
one4All

I have been reading headlines lately about how NASA is going to build ‘cloud floating bases’ on Jupiter and ‘atomic interplanetary submarines’ to explore Titan – which is a SAD FANTASY as Congress would not even approve a shuttle replacement so we have to have our astronauts fly to the ISS Space Station on RUSSIAN Rockets.
justamaz

If this is what NASA wants to spend tax money on, then lets cut them off.
Adiba El-Amin

I thought NASA was in charge of that goofy new weather religion Climate Change. Shouldn’t they be inciting their crazy followers to panic soon as the weather warms up? They still do space stuff?
- John Ostrander
  
  No… the Democratic party is the leadership of that ever popular cult. They are great at it too, we seldom even hear of scientology anymore.