Planet Expedition Project (Pt. 1)

Introduction

In this project we are to decide on an object in our solar system that could possibly support life in the future to theoretically travel to and to live on. With the main challenge in this assignment being designing and testing a vehicle that can transport my 3 person team from Point A to Point B which must be at least 5 km in distance and back on said planet.

For this part of the overall project I have been tasked with answering these things in this blog post:

1. What celestial body did you choose and why?
2. What opportunities present themselves on your new home?
3. What challenges do you foresee?
4. What implications might there be for vehicle design?
5. How do you know that the information that you have is accurate?

Celestial Body Choice: The Largest Moon of Saturn Titan

My group and I chose this moon as from the start we were interested in creating a flying vehicle and considering the options that we were given we found Titan to be a great option for both a new home and the best option for a flying vehicle due to all of its unique traits:

1. Thick Atmosphere: The thick atmosphere of Titan, comprising approximately 95 percent nitrogen and five percent methane, is four times denser than Earth’s atmosphere. This provides a lot of lift. A dense air, such as that described above, allows flights to be relatively easy to conduct with less energy compared to Earth-even for larger vehicles or less energy-hungry propulsion systems.
2. Low Gravity: Gravity on Titan is about one-seventh of Earth’s gravity at 1.352 m/s² and thus easier to achieve and sustain flight with a flying vehicle. Low gravity, along with the thick atmosphere, makes flying much easier with much less fuel and energy being expended.
3. Long Flight Endurance: As flight would require less energy, vehicles could potentially stay aloft for longer periods of time, enabling longer explorations across varied terrain: its lakes, mountains, and possible cryovolcanoes.
4. Methane and Ethane Lakes: A Potential Source for Fuels a few of the proposed flying vehicles-a drone, airship would be able, in theory, to refuel from the methane and ethane on Titan if they are built with engines adapted to hydrocarbon-based fuels. This would reduce the need for continuous fuel supply from Earth the many other previous mission, enabling longer mission durations.
5. Advantages of Exploration: Aerial vehicles could much more easily navigate around the surface of Titan than any land rovers, which would be experiencing tough times with the surface-icy and uneven. Drones can also be fitted to take samples from or hover over methane lakes for surface sampling or data gathering.

(AI Acknowledgement: AI was partly used in this section. The transcript can be found in the sources.)

Additionally, NASA has already created a concept for a rotorcraft lander named the Dragonfly that is planned to launch in 2028 July to Titan that will theoretically arrive at 2034 a probe that will scan and traverse the Titan surface to see if life can be supported.

Artist’s concept of Dragonfly soaring over the dunes of Saturn’s moon Titan.
(NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)

Opportunities & Current Vehicle Design

Due to the specific conditions of Titan and inspiration from the NASA Dragonfly we have decided to go for an airborne vehicle more specifically a quadcopter that we will test like a drone. These choices are because on Titan flying vehicles are much more energy efficient than their counterparts on Earth due to its very weak Gravity and high atmospheric density. Also a flying vehicle doesn’t have to navigate the rough terrain of Titan and can still siphon fuel from the methane and ethane lakes. Additionally, we landed on the quadcopter design because it is very stable and maneuverable which can be used if Titan’s volcanoes erupt. Also unlike a traditional plane it doesn’t need to ground itself on unsafe terrain to refuel or need a long runway to take-off and land. It can also hover in one place if one needs to study the environment at a safe distance, in addition the time it takes for a quadcopter to turn 180 is almost instant compared to the complicated and slow maneuvers that a plane must go through. With the fact that a Quadcopter is the most optimal amount of motors for a drone for most situations due to being just enough to freely traverse all 6 degrees of freedom without additional weight.

Our current prototype for the main body of the Vehicle.

Implications and Challenges

Challenges on Titan include a very low temperature and very low Sunlight. These challenges constrain our vehicle to very tough and expensive temperature and corrosion resistant electronics. Additionally, low sunlight means visibility is low all around the moon which requires us to add artificial lights to our vehicle to aid in research and safety. To test these conditions on Earth we can attempt to test the vehicle during Canadian winter nights which would satisfy both constraints.

Source: NASA Science

Sources:

To make sure our sources are accurate we have used only peer-reviewed scientific journals; the ones that NASA uses in its NASA science page for Titan. We have also double checked any information taken from ChatGPT and included a transcript of our conversations with the LLM

AI Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TjWijLECOWAQXsezNggM_eLX_iTKkaWgOMGZaUccEEg/edit?tab=t.0

References:
Hirtzig, M. (n.d.). A review of Titan’s atmospheric phenomena. 10.1007/s00159-009-0018-0

Jennings, D. E. (2016). Astrophysical Journal Letters. 816(L17). 10.3847/2041-8205/816/1/L17

Kronrod, V. A., & Dunaeva, A. N. (2020). Matching of Models of the Internal Structure and Thermal Regime of Partially Differentiated Titan with Gravity Field. Solar System Research. ebsco. 10.1134/S0038094620050044

Martin, K., SM, M., & Barnes, J. (2019). Protein Stability in Titan’s Subsurface Water Ocean. Europe pmc. 10.1089/ast.2018.1972

McKinney,, M., & Mitchell, J. (2022). Effects of Varying Land Coverage, Rotation Period, and Water Vapor on Equatorial Climates that Bridge the Gap between Earth-like and Titan-like. 10.1175/JAS-D-21-0295.1

Sotin, C., & Kalousová, K. (2021). Titan’s Interior Structure and Dynamics After the Cassini-Huygens Mission. annualreviews. 10.1146/annurev-earth-072920-052847