The mission would involve developing a new kind of spacecraft known as Trident.
It would fly to Triton and take photographs of the icy object, while also studying its atmosphere and chemical makeup for signs of an underground ocean.
[...]
Little is known about Triton, and the only images we have of the moon were captured by the Voyager 2 probe in 1989.
During that flyby, space boffins spotted geysers on Triton that spewed out nitrogen gas. Nasa earmarked it for further research.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @11:09PM (3 children)
If it has an internal ocean, it has a substantial heating mechanism.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 25 2019, @11:38PM (2 children)
Internal ocean of liquid nitrogen... hmmm... how "substantial" that heating mechanism can be? (if it can't evaporate nitrogen)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 26 2019, @12:54AM (1 child)
Objects at or beyond the frost line tend to have a lot of water. The objects in question [wikipedia.org] have a much higher proportion of water ice than Earth, possibly over 50%. Given enough internal or tidal heating, they can have liquid water oceans.
Mass of Ceres [wikipedia.org] = 0.00015 Earths = 0.0128 Moons
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:02AM
Something in the 'liquid nitrogen' and 'liquid water' in close association is wrong. Just sayin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford