NASA Could Explore Saturn’s Moon Titian Via Boat In Future
A study conducted by Dr Ellen Stofan of Proxemy Research has led to the conclusion that, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) could one day launch a mission to Titian the moon of the planet Saturn in an effort to explore the two large lakes found there. The research team had been working for two long years with a concept that suggests a mission to Titan and the exploration of the lakes via a boat and the team is now ready to submit its proposal to NASA.
The proposal states that, NASA should conduct exploration missions at the Ligeia Mare and the Kraken Mare in the north of Titan with the preferred vehicle being a boat. This mission would be the first of kind, where humans would venture into extraterrestrial planets to explore lakes and water sources. The Kraken Mare is a massive water body that when compared to earth’s water resources, turns out to be even larger than the Caspian Sea and the Ligeia Mare is also very big in size. The Kraken Mare was discovered in the year 2007, two years after the Cassinni Mission had discovered lake like contours across Titan. These contours later clearly showed water channel like pathways crisscrossing the terrain and thus had scientists believe that, the Titan had water resources.
The proposed mission is said to be called, Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) and calls for a deployment in the year 2016. The spacecraft will have to gain gravitational energy from Earth and Jupiter to reach its destination, where it is expected to arrive in June 2023 with the total cost of the project being estimated as a mere $425 million, that is substantially quite less than the previous space missions carried out by NASA.
