Saturn's moon Titan is a tantalizing world, how difficult to bring to Earth?

from
https://www.space.com/saturn-moon-titan-sample-return-mission

Scientists ponder how to get samples from Saturn's weird moon Titan
By Tereza Pultarova - Senior Writer 1 day ago

Saturn's moon Titan is a tantalizing world, how difficult would it be to 
bring a piece of it to Earth?


NASA envisions a potential future mission could bring a sample from 
Saturn's moon Titan, powering its return flight with hydrocarbons from 
the moon's surface methane lakes.

NASA envisions a potential future mission could bring a sample from 
Saturn's moon Titan, powering its return flight with hydrocarbons from 
the moon's surface methane lakes. (Image credit: NASA)
A sample-return mission to Saturn's moon Titan could discover unexpected 
forms of life and bring back chemical compounds that cannot be found on 
Earth. A team of NASA researchers is designing a mission concept that 
would use Titan's lakes of methane as a source of fuel to power the 
spacecraft’s trip back home.

(Did anyone around these newsgroups read Arthur Clarke's
book Imperial Earth?  He believes a Titan colony can
be self funding by help power travel in Solar System.)

Saturn's moon Titan is a mysterious world. The second largest moon in 
the solar system, Titan is larger than the planet Mercury and, next to 
Earth, is the only place in the solar system with flowing rivers of 
liquid and lakes on the surface. Except these rivers and lakes hold not 
water but hydrocarbons, such as methane. But Titan also has water — an 
entire ocean of it, under the moon's frozen surface. Titan also has an 
atmosphere rich in nitrogen, just like our planet.

A team of engineers from the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland has 
recently received a $125,000 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) 
grant to look into the feasibility of bringing a sample of material from 
this intriguing world to Earth. The NIAC program specializes in funding 
technology that is nowhere near ready to launch, but offers intriguing 
benefits for future exploration missions.

Click here for more Space.com videos...
CLOSE
The good news is that to land on Titan would be much easier than the 
seven minutes of terror of a landing on Mars. Titan's atmosphere is six 
times as thick as the atmosphere of Earth, and would provide enough drag 
to slow down a lander for a soft touchdown even without landing rockets.

"We expect landing on Titan to be relatively easy," Steven Oleson, head 
of the Compass Lab at Glenn, which conducts conceptual spacecraft design 
for NASA, said in a statement. "Titan has a thick atmosphere of nitrogen 
— 1.5 times the atmospheric pressure of Earth — which can slow the 
lander's velocity with an aeroshell and a parachute for a soft landing, 
just like astronauts returning to Earth."

The global scientific community got the first detailed look at Titan 
thanks to the Cassini mission, which orbited Saturn between 2004 and 
2017. During that time, the spacecraft performed over a hundred flybys 
of the planet's largest moon. The strange world that Cassini uncovered 
sparked even more scientific curiosity.

Related: Dazzling Views Show Saturn Moon Titan's Surface Like Never Before

Scientists believe that Titan’s subsurface water ocean could host life 
similar to that found in the deepest regions of Earth's ocean. Despite 
freezing surface temperatures of minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 
degrees Celsius) and up to 50% higher air pressure than on Earth, the 
surface lakes of hydrocarbons might not be lifeless either. The life 
they might harbor could be very different from that on Earth, governed 
by the carbon-rich chemistry of its surroundings.

Moreover, scientists studying Titan's surface and atmosphere have found 
a class of chemical compounds called tholins, which can't be found 
anywhere on Earth. These compounds, scientists believe, might have 
played a key role in the emergence of life on the young Earth billions 
of years ago.

There would be plenty to look for in a sample from Titan. And with the 
landing out of the way, the next big challenge would be to get the 
sample up to space, on its way back to Earth. For that, the Glenn team 
envisions, the surface lakes of methane will come in handy.

"Producing rocket fuel on Titan wouldn't require chemical processing — 
you just need a pipe and a pump," said Oleson. "The methane is already 
in a liquid state, so it's ready to go."

The Compass Lab team will now investigate how to effectively produce 
liquid oxygen, to enable the fuel to burn. One option is to melt Titan's 
"rocks" of water ice with a nuclear heat source and then split the water.

Although the sample-return concept may never fly, Titan can expect a 
robotic visitor soon. Dragonfly is an eight-bladed rotorcraft scheduled 
to begin the eight-year journey to the Saturn system in 2027.

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on 
Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, 
night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, 
let us know at: [email protected].

MORE ABOUT...