One of NASA's next great adventures could take place with a raindrop-flecked camera bobbing around on extraterrestrial waves. Or at least, that's the hope of several researchers who want to sail an unmanned, nuclear-powered capsule on Saturn's moon Titan.
Titan eerily resembles Earth with characteristics such as wind, rain and lakes, but all within the bounds of a frigid environment where methane and ethane replace liquid water. The many lakes dotting the moon's surface suggested an alternative mission proposal compared to the usual rovers and hard surface landers that NASA has sent to other destinations.
"We got funded to look at the possibility of sending a lake lander to Titan," said Ellen Stofan, a geologist with Proxemy Research in Maryland. "Scientifically, it's sort of a beyond obvious thing to do."
More: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/091014-titan-boat-mission.html (http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/091014-titan-boat-mission.html)
NASA has boffins working on plans to send a nuclear-powered robot boat to cruise the chilly patio-gas oceans of Titan, ice moon of Saturn.
Ellen Stofan, formerly a boffinry chief at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a planetary geologist who has studied the various features of Venus, Mars, Titan and Earth. She's also honorary professor of Earth Sciences at University College London.
Stofan's latest project is an interplanetary probe with a difference. Various different landers and spacecraft have been sent out by humanity to visit the worlds of the solar system: most have simply remained where they set down, and a few have trundled about on wheels. This time, the idea is to send out an exploration robot which would float, and be propelled about by the wind.
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/15/nuclear_robot_windjammer_titan/
A daring proposal to try to put a "boat" down on a sea of Saturn's moon Titan is about to be submitted to Nasa.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8409052.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8409052.stm)
Tony G