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from the at-least-the-ice-cream-won't-melt dept.
As you probably know, NASA recently announced plans to send a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. If all goes well, the Europa Clipper will blast off for the world in the 2020s, and orbit the icy moon to discover all its secrets.
And that's great and all, I like Europa just fine. But you know where I'd really like us to go next? Titan.
Titan, as you probably know, is the largest moon orbiting Saturn. In fact, it's the second largest moon in the solar system after Jupiter's Ganymede. It measures 5,190 kilometers across, almost half the diameter of the Earth. This place is big.
It orbits Saturn every 15 hours and 22 days, and like many large moons in the solar system, it's tidally locked to its planet, always showing Saturn one side.
Before NASA's Voyager spacecraft arrived in 1980, astronomers actually thought that Titan was the biggest moon in the solar system. But Voyager showed that it actually has a thick atmosphere, that extends well into space, making the true size of the moon hard to judge.
This atmosphere is one of the most interesting features of Titan. In fact, it's the only moon in the entire solar system with a significant atmosphere. If you could stand on the surface, you would experience about 1.45 times the atmospheric pressure on Earth. In other words, you wouldn't need a pressure suit to wander around the surface of Titan.
That's great news. No pressure suit needed to walk on the surface of Titan, only a rebreather and a wool sweater.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:52AM (4 children)
Shit line from... Universe Today. Even a lander won't discover all of Europa's secrets. We need to drill baby drill. Enceladus may be an easier target, based on current estimates [soylentnews.org]. But you can imagine that tens of billions of dollars would need to be spent using current and near future technology to make it happen. If an orbiter finds indirect evidence of life on one of the icy moons, maybe a drill will become a top science priority.
Obviously, you don't want to expose much skin on Titan, but Titan suits could be more versatile than Mars suits. But we might as well get used to living indoors, since there is no place other than Earth, Venus, and Titan in our solar system that has a dense atmosphere and isn't a gas giant. There's a possibility of a Planet Nine having some moons, but I'm not sure that the right combo of tidal heating, orbital stability, and dense atmosphere will appear on any of them. Same deal with a binary dwarf planet.
One problem is that we are avoiding contamination of Titan (one of the reasons why Cassini will be crashed into Saturn). Not only is there speculation about methane-based life on the surface, but (here's that list again [wikipedia.org]) there's a possible subsurface water ocean on Titan. So landing humans on Titan could be delayed for years or decades in order to look for life (hopefully) without contaminating the place.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @12:54PM (3 children)
One problem is that we are avoiding contamination of Titan (one of the reasons why Cassini will be crashed into Saturn).
We already risked biological contamination when we landed Huygens on Titan. The reason why Cassini will be sent to burn up in Saturn's atmosphere is so that we don't risk radiological contamination in the case that Cassini crashed on Titan or Enceladus and the onboard RNGs get smashed open.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:12PM (1 child)
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/grand-finale/overview/ [nasa.gov]
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:57PM
> This will ensure that Cassini cannot contaminate any future studies of habitability and potential life on those moons.
Maybe we should just do the opposite and send known bacteria in our probes.
Land the probe, see how bacteria does: That's your habitability and potential life study right there.
Looking for local life is too complex, and we'll just destroy it eventually, as soon as the right people decide there's something valuable to be exploited, and those darn greenie regulations are a hindrance to profits. Let's just shorten the time to revenue by skipping the useless "being careful" stage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @08:11PM
A random number generator doesn't need much radioactive material.