In the Planet Exploration Project, we have to choose any celestial body in the Solar System and design a vehicle that we will transport my team and I 5 km to and back on its surface. My team and I have chosen Saturn’s largest moon — Titan.
An image of Titan taken by the Cassini orbiter
Titan is an icy moon with a dense golden atmosphere composed mainly of nitrogen and methane. It contains a liquid cycle with rain, lakes and seas, and evaporation. It may also contain a subsurface ocean under the ice.
With a radius of 2574 kilometers, Titan is the second biggest moon in the Solar System, larger than even Mercury. The size of Titan gives it more gravity (around 14%) than some other large moons, such as Enceladus (1%) and Ceres (3%).
Titan compared to the Moon (upper left) and the Earth (right)
Titan is the only moon in the Solar System that has a thick atmosphere that’s slightly denser than Earth’s (around 60% greater) and through sunlight and high-energy particles in Saturn’s magnetic field, it contains a variety of carbon-based organic compounds. Titan’s atmosphere is also dense enough to absorb cosmic rays.
Titan’s internal structure, showing its layers of ice and possible subsurface ocean.
There are many reasons our team chose Titan as our moon. From a thick atmosphere that would offer substantial lift for any flying vehicles as well as low gravity, along with methane and ethane lakes which can be used as fuel sources, Titan is pretty much the perfect choice. However, there are still challenges we have to tackle while exploring the yellow moon.
One of the biggest challenges is the surface temperature — a whopping -182 °C (~90K), due to its distance from the Sun and its dense atmosphere. Titan receives about 1% of Earth’s sunlight, which also makes it very dark. Batteries and electric motors fail at around -20 °C, and most electric components fail at 0 °C.
Our second challenge is that Titan’s environment cannot be simulated in our current project. To test our prototype, we will have to use creative solutions and out-of-the-box thinking to make the most out of it.
Aiden
SOURCES
Hörst, S. M. (2017), Titan’s atmosphere and climate, J. Geophys. Res. Planets, 122, 432–482, doi:10.1002/2016JE005240.
Kvorka, J., & Čadek, O. (2022). A numerical model of convective heat transfer in Titan’s subsurface ocean. Icarus, 376, 114853.
McKay, C., Coustenis, A., Samuelson, R., Lemmon, M., Lorenz, R., Cabane, M., Rannou, P., & Drossart, P. (2001). Physical properties of the organic aerosols and clouds on Titan. Planetary and Space Science, 49(1), 79–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0032-0633(00)00051-9
McKay, C. (2016). Titan as the abode of life. Life, 6(1), 8. https://doi.org/10.3390/life6010008
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2021.114853
Mitchell, J. L., & Lora, J. M. (2016). The climate of Titan. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 44(1), 353–380. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-060115-012428
Zebker, H. A., Stiles, B., Hensley, S., Lorenz, R., Kirk, R. L., & Lunine, J. (2009). Size and shape of Saturn’s moon Titan. Science, 324(5929), 921–923. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1168905
5 Responses to “Journey to Titan – Planet Exploration Project Pt. 1”
OK, Aiden. This is a good start. You have identified a number of the challenges and opportunities posed by Titan’s environment and talked a little about how they might impact vehicle design. What I don’t know is how we know anything about this moon. You have one caption that mentions a Cassini Orbiter. What was/is that? What information did/does it collect? What other tools were used to gather information about Titan? What conclusions have scientists drawn from the data collected? Also, you are required to state whether and how you used AI to do your research or create this report. Given that the others in your group used AI, I assume that you leveraged that information. Please reply to both issues in the comments below. Resubmit the assignment when you have done so.
The Cassini Orbiter is mentioned in one of the sources (Zebker, H. A., Stiles, B., Hensley, S., Lorenz, R., Kirk, R. L., & Lunine, J. (2009). Size and shape of Saturn’s moon Titan. Science, 324(5929), 921–923. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1168905). The Cassini/Huygens Mission started in 1997, and consists of the Cassini Saturn Orbiter and the Huygens Titan Probe. The orbiter commenced a four-year tour of the Saturnian system with 45 flybys of Titan. (References
Matson, D. L. (2002). Space Science Reviews, 104(1/4), 1–58. doi:10.1023/a:1023609211620) It revolutionized our understanding of Titan and its’ interior structure, which suggested that Titan was an ocean world with a hydrosphere and a rocky core. (Sotin, C., Kalousová, K., & Tobie, G. (2021). Titan’s interior structure and dynamics after the Cassini-Huygens mission. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 49(1), 579–607. doi:10.1146/annurev-earth-072920-052847) I used AI to provide some reasons on why flying vehicles would be efficient on Titan, which is linked here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TjWijLECOWAQXsezNggM_eLX_iTKkaWgOMGZaUccEEg/edit?usp=drive_link).
Better, Aiden. Thanks for the AI transcript. I’m still left wondering how the Cassini Orbiter collected the data it did. Were there cameras mounted to it? Were other types of sensors used? I’m pretty sure that there wasn’t a picture of Titan’s “rocky core”!
The Cassini Orbiter has many different instruments attached to it. Optical instruments provide imagery and spectrometry, radio links provide measure gravity fields and others measure electromagnetic fields. (Jaffe, L. D., & Herrell, L. M. (1997). Cassini/Huygens Science Instruments, Spacecraft, and Mission. In Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets (Vol. 34, Issue 4, pp. 509–521). American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). https://doi.org/10.2514/2.3241) By measuring the thermal convection inside Titan through the gravity field, the probe presented two possible compositions of the core. (Grasset, O., Sotin, C., & Deschamps, F. (2000). On the internal structure and dynamics of Titan. In Planetary and Space Science (Vol. 48, Issues 7–8, pp. 617–636). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0032-0633(00)00039-8)
Excellent response to my comment, Aiden. Thank you!