A MISSION THAT COULD SEE a flight to Saturn's moon Titan is being studied under a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant which could use liquid methane from its atmosphere to fuel a rocket for getting samples back to Earth. Under the concept, a sample-return mission would follow the existing flight planned for 2027 which will send the Dragonfly helicopter to the solar system's second largest moon, as reported in last month's issue of SpaceFlightW 63, No 6, p4). Getting down to the surface of Titan would require deceleration through the atmosphere followed by parachute deployment, no rocket motors being required as would be the case with other moons. For return to Earth, liquid methane could be piped aboard for a rocket motor to get any surface samples back to Earth. The prospect is more attractive because of the plausibility of life forms in the hydrocarbon soup which forms the lakes and seas on this strange world. Rich in nitrogen, Titan's atmosphere is capable of supporting biological activity in a significantly developed scale due to the tholins which have been detected, organics which form when simple compounds are exposed to cosmic radiation. Tholins are not found on Earth but the Cassini mission provided the data from which experiments have been conducted to show that, when mixed with water, they produce prodigious quantities of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. And that could mean abundant life forms.
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