Putting an airplane on a distant moon
(PhysOrg.com) -- In addition to its rivers, oceans, mountains, sand dunes and winds, Saturn’s moon Titan may someday share another similarity with Earth: airplanes.
In the journal Experimental Astronomy, BYU professor Jani Radebaugh and other scientists have put forward a plan that would send a nuclear-powered drone to Titan for a year-long flight to observe the most earth-like object in our solar system.
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“Titan is a really interesting place as far as understanding the processes on the early Earth,” said Radebaugh, a geologist at BYU. “It orbits at a good distance, has organic molecules of carbon and hydrogen, there’s energy in the atmosphere and perhaps occasionally water on or near the surface – those are the main things considered necessary for life.”Titan is 10 times more distant from the sun than Earth and has a methane atmosphere four times as dense.
“Walking on Titan would feel a little like walking through a down pillow to us,” Radebaugh said. “The atmosphere is pretty stable with some low-velocity winds. It’s perfect for an airplane.”
So far what we know of Titan has come from the Cassini spacecraft that orbits Saturn. In recent years Radebaugh led the discovery of Titan’s mountains and sand dunes based on images and data beamed back to Earth by Cassini. That’s why Jason Barnes, a former grad school classmate, invited her to work on the Titan airplane concept alongside researchers from NASA and the Naval Research Laboratory.
To get a closer look, the proposed drone would operate on a nuclear battery barely strong enough to power a couple light bulbs. The battery would power a propeller except when it needed to beam data back to radio telescopes on earth. Prior to these transmissions, the drone would climb high into Titan’s atmosphere. Then power would shift to the radio cone in the drone’s nose as the aircraft glided back down to its usual flight altitude.
“Nothing is easy in space,” Radebaugh said. “But as far as space exploration goes, this is pretty easy to design and fly.”
While transporting the drone to Titan would take up to 7 years, the communication relay time once it’s there is a mere 90 minutes.
Provided by
Brigham Young University
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Jan 25, 2012
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Jan 25, 2012
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Jan 25, 2012
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This probably depend on what altitude you're at (though I have no clue as to Titan's meteorology). If Earth is anything to go by the aerosols and precipitation becomes less of a problem the higher you go.
Pointing them backwards with a modicum of shielding on the sides should do the trick. Mars rovers seem to manage.
Could be an enclosed system (except for the propeller, of course) with magnetic bearings. Since it needs no combustion there's no sense in exposing more than is needed to the atmosphere.
Infrared, radar or microwave imaging should still give good pictures.
Jan 25, 2012
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Jan 25, 2012
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Flying above the dust and clouds wouldn't help us much. All you would see is clouds, and we can see that from space. Current info we have on Titan says that aerosols condense on dust particles high in the atmosphere and grow until they become heavy enough to fall to lower, more dense parts of the atmosphere. That info is available from many different sources.
Control surfaces must have hinges and joints. Fine dust on the moon was able to get into the sealed joints of the space suits. It's a very difficult engineering problem, with trade-offs between different solutions.
No moisture on Mars. Dust, not mud.
Jan 25, 2012
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
This, too, could be enclosed. There's no reason not to have a membrane cover the entire surface of teh craft. Think of it like a manta ray: It manages to steer even though its control surfaces expose no joints to the medium.
Hey, with such thick atmosphere an undulating mode of propulsion might actually work instead of a propeller. Small, hydrogen filled buoyancy fixtures could create major upthrust.
Depending on the characteristic of the 'mud' particles we can either use a lotus effect surface or include a thin, piezoelectric layer which is occasionally set to vibrate at ultrasonic frequencies to shake any residue off
Jan 25, 2012
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Jan 25, 2012
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Because that would not be a novel mission. The NASA TSSM mission is (or rather was) in the pipe.
http://en.wikiped..._Mission
Jan 25, 2012
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
Not correct. Cassini probes already made photograps there, and there was more than enough light for it. In fact the artist impression looks like the Cassini Huygens real pictures. Even more, cameras have to be more complex at earth atmosphere, where there is too much light and hard contrast and it is easy to saturate sensors. Also drones are more complex for earth, lower gravity and much denser air means that much less energy is required for flyng.
And no other air traffic nor terrorist fire to take into acount.
Jan 25, 2012
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Jan 25, 2012
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I'm not sure about that. I hear Al Qaeda is already set up on Titan and our Moon.
Jan 25, 2012
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
From the Titan wiki:
"The Huygens probe was unable to detect the direction of the Sun during its descent, and although it was able to take images from the surface, the Huygens team likened the process to "taking pictures of an asphalt parking lot at dusk"
btw, they only took one picture from the surface. The probe only worked for about 90 minutes after landing. The picture is false color in a limited spectrum, since only a few wavelengths can get through the atmosphere. I should have specified that the artist's conception wouldn't look like that to human eyes. For our eyes, it would be like complete darkness.
From the Huygens wiki:
"landing site, which, surprisingly, became clearly visible only below 25 kilometers altitude"
So even with cameras designed to see through, they couldn't see the ground till below 25 km. There's the answer about how low to fly.
Jan 25, 2012
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Jan 26, 2012
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I disagree. Since Titan is the only place we know of aside from Earth which has flowing liquid on the surface, Titan is really cool.
Europa is my top pick though. The largest liquid water ocean in the known universe has GOT to be explored some day.
Jan 26, 2012
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Jan 26, 2012
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This is speculation on my part, but I will guess that you find Titan and Europa so interesting because they may host some kind of life. This does make them very interesting, but I think the probability of finding life is so high that I won't be surprised if it's found. And once it's found, ethical pressures are likely to prevent us from comprehensive exploration, mining, terraforming, etc.
Venus, however, probably doesn't support life. It wouldn't be unethical, if it's possible, to engineer a microbe to sequester the carbon and split water/O2 from the sulfuric acid clouds. The carbon capture could have applications on Earth, and Venus would be the best place to set up long-term colonies if not for the hostile atmosphere.
Jan 27, 2012
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Jan 28, 2012
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Sca-r-y, ve-ry Sc-a-a-r-y :(
On the other hand, if we could deliver the right energy at the right frequency the way we move electrons around an atom we could coerce Titan into an orbit slongside ours around the sun so that we could use it to replenish our carbon fuel supplies as needed.
v -e r y in - ter- esting.. :)
Jan 28, 2012
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
You are aware that every day tons of material (meteorites) screams through Titans atmosphere, evaporsting/being turned into plasma/exploding/doing all sorts of high energy shennaningans?
Methane is only explosive in an oxygen atmosphere. Titan does not have an oxygen atmosphere.
Wow. That is the most crazily uninformed idea I've read all week on physorg. Beats cold fusion, neutron repulsion and aether theory hands down.
Jan 29, 2012
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http://pesn.com/2...Changer/
Jan 29, 2012
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Jan 29, 2012
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Yah - I wish that there were negative stars, sometimes.
Jan 29, 2012
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Jan 30, 2012
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I think we should check the weather conditions there carefully before dropping something flimsy into the midst of it.