NASA Wants to Send a Submarine to Navigate the Seas of Neptune’s Moon Titan

NASA recently unveiled its plans to build an autonomous submersible that could be made to navigate the choppy seas of Neptune's moon Titan. Currently envisaged as a possible mission in the coming years, NASA's COMPASS team of researchers are hopeful that they can design a submarine that can explore Kracken Mare, the largest lake in Titan to undertake a journey of 1,250 miles over a 90 day period.

Titan interestingly is the only moon in our solar system which has an atmosphere of its own. The key difference here is that the atmosphere of Titan possess a methane cycle instead of a 'water cycle' like we have here on earth. The liquid methane showers, which rain down on various landscapes help to form seas, valleys and lakes.

Navigating the Kracken Mare could prove to be a considerable challenge since the lakes are close to a freezing point of -298 Fahrenheit. Add to that, the presence of tides and choppy waves do pose multiple engineering problems while designing terrestrial submarines. NASA plans to combat this by building a special piston driven propulsion system which uses nitrogen as a ballast.

 Since most of the lakes on Neptune's moon is made up of liquid methane and ethane, the submarine powered by a radioisotope generator would be spending long periods of time under sea. Electricity would be generated through the heat produced by the radioactive pellets. While the submarine cannot transmit data back to earth when submerged, it would be designed to undertake regular ascents to the surface.

The scientists during their study opined, "Measurement of the trace organic components of the sea, which perhaps may exhibit prebiotic chemical evolution, will be an important objective, and a benthic sampler (a robotic grabber to sample sediment) would acquire and analyze sediment from the seabed,"

"These measurements, and seafloor morphology via sidescan sonar, may shed light on the historical cycles of filling and drying of Titan's seas. Models suggest Titan's active hydrological cycle may cause the north part of Kraken to be 'fresher' (more methane-rich) than the south, and the submarine's long traverse will explore these composition variations."