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Cassini Finds Evidence For Ocean Inside Titan
Riding with Robots writes "NASA reports that by using data from the Cassini probe's radar, scientists established the locations of 50 unique landmarks on the surface of Saturn's planet-size moon Titan. They then searched for these same lakes, canyons and mountains in the data after subsequent Titan flybys. They found that the features had shifted from their expected positions by up to 30 kilometers. NASA says a systematic displacement of surface features would be difficult to explain unless the moon's icy crust was decoupled from its core by an internal ocean, making it easier for the crust to move. If confirmed, this discovery would add to the growing list of moons in the solar system that are icy on the outside and warm and liquid inside, providing potential habitats. We've previously discussed Titan's hydrocarbon lakes and potential cryovolcano."
Titan is one of the most exciting bodies in our solar system. Having recently read Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, he wrote a fair bit about the abundance of organic molecules on Titan. We seem to keep discovery more and more exciting things about this moon. It's probably still unlikely that there is life on it, but it sure would be interesting to send a probe in to it and see what we can discover.
I think the biggest difficulty would be power. Our Mars rovers have been solar powered, but it's unlikely that that would work on Titan, since it's much farther from the Sun, and its atmosphere will block most of what little light does reach it, since it's basically opaque. All of our outer solar systems probes have been nuclear powered, and there might be difficulties in engineering that to fit on a rover and provide sufficient power. A rover would also have to contend with the weather (it rains methane), and the atmosphere might pose a challenge for radio communications to orbit. I don't think any of these challenges are insurmountable, but they definitely mean that we can't just drop a rover engineered for Mars on Titan -- it will take an entirely new design.
Science fiction: 2001, Star Trek, Lost in Space, ...
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Science: space probes, lunar landings,
Engineering: solar power satellites, industrial microgravity,
Industry: weather satellites, communication satellites, GPS,
Science leads to spinoffs in multiple directions. Science fiction is one of them. New industries are another. We're in a Red Queen's Race here, and stopping all the science won't speed us up much, but it'll sure make it harder to keep running.
If you're worried about wasted money, don't look to Cape Canaveral, look to Baghdad.