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

On 5/19/2021 1:14 PM, a425couple wrote:
> 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.)
> 
and this:
https://www.fierceelectronics.com/electronics/dragonfly-drone-to-fly-titan-follow-up-ingenuity-mars

Dragonfly drone to fly on Titan in follow-up of Ingenuity on Mars
by Matt Hamblen | May 4, 2021 5:24pm

The Dragonfly drone, the size of a small car, is designed to investigate 
pre-biotic chemistry on Titan, the largest moon on Saturn. The mission 
will last two years, with a launch from Earth set for 2027. (Johns 
Hopkins APL)

After Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, Dragonfly will be the next NASA drone 
helicopter to fly above the surface of another world when it arrives on 
Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, after launching from Earth in 2027.

Dragonfly will be much larger than tiny Ingenuity-- about the size of a 
small car-- although it is still undergoing design. It will conduct a 
mission lasting over two years to investigate samples on the surface of 
Titan’s organic oceanic world.

The dual quadcopter will be able to travel tens of miles in a single 
flight, powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator 
(MMRTG), like one used on the Perseverance rover on Mars, to provide 60 
watts of power to charge onboard batteries. Ingenuity has relied on 
solar power, but the atmosphere of Titan is too dense to provide enough 
sunlight and Titan is much farther from the Sun than Mars.

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Scientists hope to answer fundamental questions such as what makes a 
planet or moon habitable? Or what chemical processes led to the 
development of life?

NASA shared the insights of experts for Ingenuity and Dragonfly during 
an online YouTube event on Tuesday, taking questions from the public. 
Because Dragonfly will be size of a car, it will be hard to test it on 
Earth. “We will supplement drone flight tests with a lot of simulations 
to cover what we think we might experience on Titan,” said Nishant 
Mehta, deputy lead for the Dragonfly Mobile System at Johns Hopkins 
Applied Physics Lab.

The Dragonfly team has carefully watched the successful four flights of 
Ingenuity on Mars, recognizing that both craft are similar because they 
must be piloted autonomously.  “With Ingenuity we learned they used a 
common cell phone processor, which was really inspiring and surprising 
to me,” Mehta said. (Ingenuity relies on a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.)

Dragonfly—like Ingenuity—must also be able to survive extreme cold, 
which can reach nearly negative 300 degrees F. on Titan, compared to 
about 100 below on Mars.

“Survivability is one of the bigger challenges,” said Johnny Lam, an 
Ingenuity Mars Helicopter pilot at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 
“There’s a lot involved…a lot of work and testing,” including for a 
heater which has kept Ingenuity at an operating temperature to guarantee 
it will wake up every day.

Ingenuity has relied on Perseverance to transmit images and data to Mars 
orbiters which in turn relay it to Earth.  But Titan, so far, has no 
orbiters and will rely on a high gain antenna to transmit images and 
data to Earth directly. It will have the ability to take one picture per 
second, but the challenge will be getting that data back to Earth, with 
data rates of 10 kilobits per second.  “That’s not a lot, so we’ll be 
spending time optimizing what data to bring down,” Mehta said.

While Perseverance on Mars will be collecting Mars rocks and dust, the 
samples will not be analyzed until they are picked up on a later mission 
in 2026 or 2028 to return to Earth for analysis.  Dragonfly, meanwhile, 
will be able to test the Titan surface and atmosphere and send back data 
by using a mass spectrometer and a neutron-activated gamma-ray 
spectrometer. It will also have meteorology sensors for monitoring the 
atmosphere. It will even conduct seismic studies to detect subsurface 
activity.

Scientists learned starting in 2004 with the Cassini orbiter and its 
radar and near-infrared imaging and a Huygens probe that was parachuted 
down to the Titan surface that moon has a salty ocean beneath the 
water-ice surface.

Cassini also revealed that Titan’s surface has rivers, lakes and seas of 
liquid ethane and methane. The methane can form clouds and even rain, 
which falls much slower than on Earth. That is because Titan’s 
atmosphere is four times denser than Earth’s and its gravity is about 
1/7th of Earth’s. Both of those factors favor Dragonfly’s ability to fly 
even with its sizeable weight compared to Ingenuity’s four pounds.

Because Titan’s atmosphere is mostly made up of nitrogen with some 
methane, their molecules are split apart when exposed to sunlight and 
then recombine to form complex organic compounds. Those organic 
molecules are the reason scientists are so thrilled to travel to Titan 
and make measurements because organic molecules are the building blocks 
of life.  Scientists last fall discovered a carbon-based molecule, C3H2, 
in Titan’s atmosphere using a radio telescope.

  “Titan’s unique combination of abundant, complex, carbon-rich 
chemistry on its largely water-ice surface makes it an ideal location 
for such investigations,” APL says on its web site.

A short video from 2018 by JHU APL describes the purpose behind the mission:

  Dragonfly’s mission to search for evidence of pre-biotic chemistry may 
sound like the stuff of science fiction, but the work is underway.  NASA 
News Events Supervisor Jia-Rui Cook pointed out that Tuesday’s online 
event was staged for May 4th, widely known as the “May the Fourth be 
with you” from the Star Wars saga.

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