“Titan Submarine, or Titan Sub for short, will be a fully autonomous, highly capable science craft that will allow a complete exploration of what exists beneath the waves on another world.” That’s the single coolest thing NASA has ever written.
In a recent proposal made by NASA, titled Exploring the Depths of Titan’s Seas, Steven Oleson outlines the organization’s new plan to develop and eventually launch a spacebound submarine whose mission will be to, you guessed it, explore the depths of Titan’s (Saturn’s moon) hydrocarbon ocean Kraken Mare. The entire project is far from actual execution, as its launch would take place in 2038 at the earliest, but it’s a pretty neat concept nonetheless.
“It will create new technologies in the form of a semi-autonomous planetary submersible which could be extended to other planetary oceans,” Oleson writes, “and would capture the imaginations of educators and students by sharing with them exploration of a completely new environment on a foreign world.”
Unlike Earth, Titan’s oceans are made of liquid methane instead of water. But scientists are hopeful they can find living organisms under Kraken Mare’s surface. According to NASA, methane is replenished by the presence of living organisms on Earth, leading to the idea that the same could apply on Titan. What and how methane is replenished within the moon’s atmosphere is a mystery that could be solved with the revolutionary sub proposed by Olesen. And viola, we are one step closer to real life space pirates.
