Scientists have built spacecraft and rovers for decades to study stars, asteroids, planets and other celestial objects. Now, researchers are conceptualizing the first submarine to be sent in the 2030s to explore oceans from other planets.
The Perseverance Rover, which is currently on its way to Mars, is accompanied by Ingenuity, the first helicopter to attempt flight across another planet. It is this kind of ambition that researchers of a potential Titan submarine is banking on.
Steven Oleson of NASA's Glenn Research Center and his team had completed the first two rounds of NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program for their design in 2014 and 2015 but failed to reach the final round. The goal of his team was to build a simple blueprint of a possible submarine to conquer Titan, the largest moon Saturn has.
Titan is packed with liquid hydrocarbon bodies, or seas and lakes consisting of ethane and methane. The NASA-ESA mission Cassini-Huygens started researching Saturn and its moons from 2004 through 2017. NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter and the Huygens lander had obtained much of the knowledge about Titan's surface that scientists know today.
NASA is also working on Dragonfly, a drone which will study the chemical composition of Titan and ultimately determine if the moon is habitable. The Titan mission is expected to launch by 2026 and arrive on the satellite by 2034.
During Oleson's presentation of the submarine design of his team, he was curious about the kind of necessary technology and the nature of Titan 's climate. It is the second largest moon in the Solar System that has a gravitational pull which is about 14 percent of the Earth's force.
Which means a Titan submarine will push under lighter pressure than one on Earth. And, because the seas and lakes of Titan are composed of liquid hydrocarbons, it is somewhat different from swimming under water. Oleson stated that radio waves could quickly pass across the water bodies of Titan and, based on the architectural design, could possibly transmit and receive contact directly from Earth.
Oleson has claimed that to carry communications equipment, the submarine design would need to be at least 20 feet long and weigh about 3,300 pounds. If it had an additional orbiter, the smaller piece of equipment would only have to be 6.5 feet long and 1,100 pounds.
The proposed instruments of the sub will only be used to study the chemical composition of the planet and contain sensors, a weather monitor, and equipment for testing liquid and other physical specimens. Oleson 's team already had a prior idea of a boat rather than a submarine, but it wouldn't be able to obtain as much scientific evidence.
"We're losing out on science, just from the fact that we can't submerge and do a lot of these tests," Oleson said about the boat concept. For now, they are waiting on NASA to approve the concept.
