.A submarine to explore in 2040 the largest ocean in the northern hemisphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is among a dozen futuristic proposals of the National Aeronautics and space Administration (NASA) of the United States. Titan, the second largest moon in the solar system after Ganymede, highlighted by the presence of lakes and seas on its surface, although these are not composed of water and earth, they are seas of liquid hydrocarbons.
Saturn is the sixth planet of the solar system, has a system of rings visible from Earth and over 40 moons, but Titan is the interest aroused by the physical characteristics very similar to those of Earth. Orange has dense atmosphere, 10 times higher than the ground, composed mainly of nitrogen, rich in methane, ethane and hydrocarbons.
Last year NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealed that Titan contains 40 times more hydrocarbons than all the oil wells of the Earth, so the idea of developing a submarine to explore the Sea Kraken, a huge body fluid in northern that moon. The submersible craft would be autonomous and conduct detailed scientific research under the sea surface, which extends over a thousand miles and has depths estimated at 300 meters, comparable in size to the Great Lakes, the largest group of freshwater lakes world, on the border between the United States and Canada.
For this mission, NASA intends to investigate a wide range of oceanographic phenomena, chemical composition of liquids, currents, mixing and stratification in the liquid column, tides, wind and waves, bathymetry, and bottom characteristics and composition, whose measurements can only be made through the in situ exploration.
NASA also consider sending a sailboat to study Titan seas and rivers, a project scrapped four years ago to be a new milestone in astronomy. The presentation of the Titan Mare Explorer mission (TIME) proposed its launch in January 2015 to begin his mission to Titan in June 2023. According to experts the digital site Space.com said, the project is an alternative to the orbiters they are having trouble studying some features of Saturn's moon due to its thick atmosphere.
Since the cloudy and misty surface of Saturn's largest moon just does not let sunlight, it was suggested that the ship was fed a radioisotope generator. These types of engines, called Stirling, using a radioactive source such as plutonium for heating a gas in a chamber. As it flows to a cold chamber, the flow is converted into mechanical energy with very high efficiency rate.
Another challenge of this initiative was to make the boat buoyant because methane forming seas is 45 percent more dense than liquid water. Experts pointed to a deep hollow hull to increase boat speed. In addition, the liquid has the advantage that methane is eight percent less viscous than water.
The sailboat Titan would experience only 26 percent of frictional resistance relative to its terrestrial equivalent, giving the possibility for deeper and longer hull. The candle on average get less wind on Titan than on Earth. Data from the Cassini probe speeds should be about three feet per second, but may be higher in lakes.
Another initiative of the U.S. space agency's search for life on other planets, the exploitation of energy resources, capturing asteroids and other purposes, is the creation of nano. These artifacts would be responsible for capturing asteroids or meteorites that threaten Earth and space junk that accumulates in space for decades.
Appears between ideas designing a ship approaching the rock or comet distance and release a group of small probes to map the gravitational field of the body and describe their composition and structure. Among the proposals is also an innovative concept space telescope, the Aragoscope, which build on the principles of diffraction to capture images with a resolution a thousand times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope.
For missions in deep space the Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System (HERTS) A propulsion concept would use the sun's energy to propel ships just outside the solar system, with over 700 kilometers per second, based on shuffled similar to a solar sail system.
New ideas NASA for space exploration were selected as part of a program on advanced innovative concepts (NIAC, for its acronym in English). In the first phase of the project will invest $ 100,000 in each proposal and, after nine months of work and study, officials will present the real possibilities to realize them. If approved, will invest $ 500,000 more for continuing research for two years.
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