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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:53AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:19AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:19AM (#485050)

    Instead of a fuel tank, you have an oxidizer tank. Mix that with the atmosphere, and it is probably just barely suited to running a gas turbine. If not, add a bit more fuel.