NASA Reveals Animation of Titan Submarine
Posted on February 14, 2015
NASA has released a video of an animation of a Titan Submarine that could be used to explore Kraken Mare on Saturn's moon Titan in a future mission. Kraken Mare is similar in size to the Great Lakes on Earth. The liquid methane sea is estimated to be 300 meters deep in some places.
NASA says the submarine design was developed for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program. It was developed by NASA Glenn's COMPASS Team, and technologists and scientists from the Applied Physics Lab and submarine designers from the Applied Research Lab. NASA says the submarine could be part of mission to Titan containing multiple vehicles. NASA calls the submarine the Titan Sub in a press release from last summer.
The Titan Sub would be a fully autonomous craft. The recently released video shows the Titan Sub collecting data on the surface of Kraken Mare before diving to explore the bottom of the methane sea. The animation of the submarine concept was released by the NASA Glenn Research Center. Take a look:
The Huygens probe landed on the surface of Titan in January 2005. NASA and ESA celebrated the ten-year anniversary of the mission last month. This was the first landing of a probe on a moon in the outer solar system.
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