Several Craft Travel to Saturn’s Neighbourhood
Different sophisticated craft, which are to explore Saturn’s moons in search of life in the Solar System, are already on space agencies' drawing boards.
Sub explores Titan’s methane ocean
NASA aims to study Titan’s methane oceans thoroughly using an autonomous submarine by the name of Titan Submarine. After a slow descent through the moon’s atmosphere, the submarine is to land in the up to 300-m-deep and 400,000 km2 Kraken Mare ocean on Titan’s north pole.
During two missions of 3 months each, the 2-m-long submarine will study different parts of the methane ocean. It will dive down to map out its contents, currents, and bottom, and it will explore the surface to measure environmental conditions such as wind and pressure above the ocean. The sub's instruments will also analyse the ocean’s hydrocarbons and measure its exact chemical make-up to find out if life could exist.
The dorsal fin is a radar, which will continuously send data to a spacecraft orbiting the moon. The craft passes the data on to Earth to be analysed by NASA astronomers.
Scientists reach two moons in one go
Scientists aim to kill two birds with one stone with the Explorer of Enceladus and Titan craft – E2T – and take a closer look at Saturn’s two most interesting moons during the same space mission. Like Cassini and ELF, E2T is to fly though Enceladus’ geysers to measure the contents of the subterranean ocean by means of its accurate instruments.
Subsequently, E2T will continue to Titan, where it will fly through the moon’s dense atmosphere 17 times at an altitude of 900-1,500 km. En route, E2T’s instruments will collect samples of the atmosphere and analyse the gases. On both missions, a camera will take highresolution photos of the moons’ surfaces.