NASA's PR: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-dragonfly-will-fly-...
NASA's announcement video: https://youtu.be/xn3-0a19sC8
NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
11–20 of 197 posts
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#12It's interesting that there is no existing (or planned) launch vehicle that could perform a direct injection for this mission. Getting to Saturn is really, really hard, and without multiple gravity assists from the inner solar system it would be simply impossible. Too bad it results in an 11 year transit time though! Flying direct would save almost 8 years of that...
> Getting to Saturn is really, really hard
Why is that?
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#13> Scientists suspect that Titan might even have water—real, actual H2O—lurking beneath its surface.
Not just a little, but a lot of water:
> The density of Titan is consistent with a body that is about 60% rock and 40% water.
> ...
> Pre-Cassini models of impact trajectories and angles suggest that where the impactor strikes the water ice crust, a small amount of ejecta remains as liquid water within the crater. It may persist as liquid for centuries or longer, sufficient for "the synthesis of simple precursor molecules to the origin of life".[107]
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#14It's interesting that there is no existing (or planned) launch vehicle that could perform a direct injection for this mission. Getting to Saturn is really, really hard, and without multiple gravity assists from the inner solar system it would be simply impossible. Too bad it results in an 11 year transit time though! Flying direct would save almost 8 years of that...
> Getting to Saturn is really, really hard Why is that?
Delta-v.
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#15I'm interested to see how this mission is couched from a PR standpoint (specifically the long long transit time). Emily Lakdawalla from the planetary society had a good tweet related to this: https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/1144492247032799238?s...
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#16>To protect the hazy moon, engineers deliberately shoved Cassini into Saturn, a gaseous planet incapable of hosting life.
Can we be 100% sure there isn't life.
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#17A flying drone is a really solid idea for a Titan lander for a couple reasons: * The surface atmosphere density is higher than Earth's (1.5 atm) * Gravitational force is much lower (0.15g) * We don't know a lot about the surface composition or topography, so wheels and motors represent a challenge * Visibility may be poor, making visual navigation tricky (though that's also a problem for a flying vehicle I suppose) I…
In addition to lack of solar energy, I wonder if nuclear power source is necessary to keep batteries or other electronics warm enough to function properly.
Conversely, on Titan, we won't need to worry about heat sinks as everything is kept at ~94K in a bath of liquid and frozen methane. Perhaps in a few hundred years AWS's most popular region for intensive compute will be under Titan's methane sea. High spin up cost, but cheap super-conduction environment once you're up.
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#18It's interesting that there is no existing (or planned) launch vehicle that could perform a direct injection for this mission. Getting to Saturn is really, really hard, and without multiple gravity assists from the inner solar system it would be simply impossible. Too bad it results in an 11 year transit time though! Flying direct would save almost 8 years of that...
> Getting to Saturn is really, really hard Why is that?
Just the speeds required. This mission will effectively have a speed of about 17km/s faster than the speeds just to get to low Earth orbit after its final gravity assist.
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#19It's interesting that there is no existing (or planned) launch vehicle that could perform a direct injection for this mission. Getting to Saturn is really, really hard, and without multiple gravity assists from the inner solar system it would be simply impossible. Too bad it results in an 11 year transit time though! Flying direct would save almost 8 years of that...
Even spaceX's starship/BFR with LEO refuel wouldn't work?
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#20>To protect the hazy moon, engineers deliberately shoved Cassini into Saturn, a gaseous planet incapable of hosting life. Can we be 100% sure there isn't life.
We can be sure that Earthling life wouldn't survive in Saturn, thus posing no threat to hypothetical Saturnian biology.