NASA Hopefully will go To Titan and/or Mars Instead of a Comet PLEASE!

reply to post by MacAnkka


Yeah i'm curious How Space.com usually the best source for this kind of stuff can get things mixed up.

I've been visiting the site for almost 7-9 years now and they usually don't mess up with the Press release announcements.

It really confused me when i saw the NASA press release and the alternate missions were Venus and The Dark side of moon That confused the heck out of me.

Can you shed some light or do you know when they will decide on the Titan , Mars, Or Comet Mission?

I can't seem to find a website explaining when or article; For that matter.

We need to go to Pluto

So it seems we still have a chance of it going either way.

Whichever choice they make, im sure they'll produce very interesting results for us to filter through.

reply to post by Phage




Agreed!!

Spirit was my favorite rover though...I do look forward to Curiosity, it is pretty darn cool. I was in the mall recently and they had a huge life size blow up of the rover to show you what it will look like. They had a few display boards and pamphlets to tell you what Curiosity would be up to. A few people from the program were there to discuss it. I was the only person out of all the people walking around at the moment that even stopped. I would much rather see these in the mall where you learn something vs stands where they try to sell me useless things. I found it odd to see this infront of JcPenny's but I enjoyed it, just wish I knew where to get one of those blow up rovers

Originally posted by TheUniverse
Can you shed some light or do you know when they will decide on the Titan , Mars, Or Comet Mission?

I can't seem to find a website explaining when or article; For that matter.

To be honest, I don't know either. Actually, I think it might not even happen this year, might be next year.

EDIT: Here seems to be a decent timeline: discovery.larc.nasa.gov...
If i'm interpreting that correctly, the teams behind the selected three finalist missions have until February 2012 to finish detailed reports of their proposed missions. Based on these, the final mission will be selected in June 2012.
[end edit]

Originally posted by Defender89
We need to go to Pluto

We already are going, New Horizions is already halfway there. Just wait for 2015, when it will arrive there

reply to post by Defender89


New Horizons

reply to post by Catch_a_Fire


I'm Hoping they choose the Titan mission. It really seems the most interesting to me.

It would be insane not to its the only other planet in the Solar System known to have Liquid Seas/Oceans on A Terrestrial Surface we can explore.

reply to post by Catch_a_Fire


I'm Hoping they choose the Titan mission. It really seems the most interesting to me.

It would be insane not to its the only other planet in the Solar System known to have Liquid Seas/Oceans on A Terrestrial Surface we can explore.

Titan would be a great choice since there is massive debate on whether or not life could exist below the surface. That would be my first choice, and probably an asteroid like Temple 1 or similar would be my second. By the way speaking about Titan did that project that wanted to drill down into the oceans succeed?

reply to post by Golithion


There hasn't been a mission to drill down into the oceans on Titan yet; i think that was a proposed mission to Europa. Titans Oceans as far as to my knowledge are liquid Methane. They aren't frozen.

There are currently no missions heading to either but Missions are planned..

Set up the mission yourself and see how much its going to cost you.

What you might not understand is all of the earthly infrastructure to make any kind of launch mission substantial. I suppose you have a tiny mission control in your parent's basement, huh?

I believe NASA Cassini is visiting Titan as we speak.

reply to post by Illustronic


www.abovetopsecret.com...

I really want to see more Titan exploration. It is THE most alien place in our solar system. There's nothing else like it. I want to see what those methane lakes really look like! It would be so awesome.

I agree, Titan would be the better choice. IF they can overcome the engineering difficulties. By that I mean power supply. At 10 AU's they can't use solar panels (at that distance solar would only yield 1.366watts/sqr. meter.)
Batteries will not last long enough for any type of exploration on the surface due to the cold. -178 C.
So what's left? Radioisotope thermoelectric generators, like what's powering Cassini now? I don't think so. The excess heat would melt the surface and the lander would sink! So, instead of a lander, how about a balloon? The RTG could be used to heat the balloon to keep an instrument package suspended from a long tether (so the heat of the balloon dose not interfere with the data being gathered) at a set altitude above the surface as well as providing power for years of observations.

Originally posted by AaronC
I agree, Titan would be the better choice. IF they can overcome the engineering difficulties. By that I mean power supply. At 10 AU's they can't use solar panels (at that distance solar would only yield 1.366watts/sqr. meter.)
Batteries will not last long enough for any type of exploration on the surface due to the cold. -178 C.
So what's left? Radioisotope thermoelectric generators, like what's powering Cassini now? I don't think so. The excess heat would melt the surface and the lander would sink! So, instead of a lander, how about a balloon? The RTG could be used to heat the balloon to keep an instrument package suspended from a long tether (so the heat of the balloon dose not interfere with the data being gathered) at a set altitude above the surface as well as providing power for years of observations.

NASA is currently working on a power source called ASRG, advanced Stirling radioisotope generator. It uses the heat prodeuced by Plutonium-238 as the power source, just like RTGs, but instead of using thermocouples to convert the heat into electricity, it is based on a Stirling engine. It uses a lot less fuel to produce a similiar amount of elecricity. Downsides are that it has moving parts and can cause vibrations in the craft because of that. This is a problem for spacecraft like Cassini, that need to be stable to take pictures and other measurements, but would be perfect for the Titan lake lander, for example.

The current Discovery mission selection allowed a team to suggest the usage of a ASRG as a power source. If a mission using an ASRG is selected as the final mission, NASA will provide the power source. The titan lake lander proposal suggested the usage of an ASRG.

ASRG:
futureplanets.blogspot.com...

p.s. This link contains nice power points about the theree proposed missions:
futureplanets.blogspot.com...

reply to post by MacAnkka


Thank you for the information, and the link. However, while the ASRG does sound ideal to power rovers on Mars, you still have the problem with the waste heat being generated by the ASRG corrupting the local area and affecting the data being collected. With a surface made of water and ammonia ice and lakes of liquid ethane, any heat source is liable to "vaporize" the surrounding environment.

I want to be part of the Mars expedition when it happens. So I hope they go for the asteroid for now. Besides Mars and Titan will be there forever. The asteroid on the other hand comes by rarely.