NASA plans to bring a piece of Titan to Earth, and refuel the rocket directly on the satellite

The American space agency is working on an ambitious project, according to which scientists intend to send a return mission to Titan (the satellite of Saturn).

In order to safely return the Titan samples, the engineers plan to use methane, and they should be refueled directly on the satellite, because there rivers are made of it (methane), lakes and seas.

Unique operation to deliver soil to Earth

Throughout its history, mankind has managed to deliver to Earth not so many samples for further study. This is how Soviet and American spacecraft successfully delivered samples of the Moon. In addition, samples were taken from some large asteroids and comets, and in the relatively nearby future NASA expects to deliver rock samples from Mars to be collected by the rover Perseverance.

But NASA engineers do not plan to stop there and are already making plans for more distant objects in our solar system. And one of the immediate targets is Titan - a very interesting satellite of Saturn from a scientific point of view.

What do we know about Titan

So, Titan is the second largest satellite in the solar system and in terms of its dimensions it is even larger than a planet like Mercury. And Titan is the only satellite in our system with rivers, lakes and even seas on its surface. But they do not consist of water (as on our Earth with you), but of hydrocarbons and mainly methane.

A radar study carried out by the Gassini spacecraft showed that the surface of the satellite in mainly consists of water ice, which is replaced by huge bodies of water filled mainly with liquid methane. In addition, precipitation falls on Titan in the form of liquid methane.

And, based on this data, the engineers decided to work out a mission to Titan.

An ambitious mission to Titan

So, as part of a special program Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) (selection of promising ideas for the study of space), NASA has already allocated the first funding of $ 125,000 for the initial study of the landing mission to Titan and the subsequent return of the vehicle with the collected samples.

According to experts, the NIAC program is an option to support NASA's so-called "crazy" projects, on development of which takes decades, but if successful, they can radically change the course of development of space industry.

As T. Zurbuchen (head of NASA's science division), today's missions to Mars were previously also related to class of "madmen" therefore it is quite possible that this mission to Titan may be quite successful.

At the current stage, the study was entrusted to the laboratory Compass Lab, which previously put forward the idea of ​​sending a miniature submarine to Titan to study the methane seas.

Also, as experts note, landing on the surface of the satellite will be much easier than landing on the same Mars. And all because the atmosphere of the satellite is one and a half times denser than the Earth's. This means that it is quite possible to use a standard parachute system, with the help of which spacecraft descend to Earth.

In addition, refueling on the satellite itself also does not look fantastic, since the methane is already in liquid form and it will be enough to simply pump it back into the tanks.

The only major problem is the oxidizing agent. And at the moment, scientists are thinking about how you can get oxygen on Titan.

One of the options is to melt water ice through the use of radioisotope heat sources, and then split the water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Why bother with all this

Scientists are interested in Titan primarily because they have a hope that in the already water ocean hidden under the surface satellite, there may well be unearthly life forms similar to those that researchers discover at great depths already on earth oceans.

In addition, previous studies made it possible to detect Tolin on the satellite - this is a class of organic substances that are likely to have played a key role in the formation of life on Earth billions of years ago back.

So, according to calculations, the flight to Titan will take about seven years. But even if the return mission to the satellite of Saturn does not take place, then in 2026 NASA's Dragonfly mission with a sufficiently large quadcopter will definitely go to it.

The device will arrive on the satellite in 2034 and, having arrived at the calculated point, will be landed in the equatorial part, where its long mission to study the surface of Titan will begin. So scientists express the hope that their apparatus will reach the Selk crater, which is interesting for scientists from the point of view of the formation of life.

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