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Space: NASA considering a probe to Saturn's moon Titan, or a comet

Introversion

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Finalists for the agency’s next solar system mission take a deeper dive on previous projects

Science News said:
NASA’s next mission will go where some spacecraft have gone before. The two finalists in the agency’s selection process will return to either Saturn’s moon Titan or comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, NASA announced in a press teleconference on December 20.

The Dragonfly mission would launch a drone-like craft to Saturn’s largest moon in 2025 that would land in 2034. NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission showed that Titan has lakes and rivers of liquid ethane and methane, and may have chemistry that is conducive to life.

“We can test how far prebiotic chemistry has progressed in an environment that we know has the ingredients for life,” said lead investigator Elizabeth Turtle of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

The other finalist, the Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR) mission, would launch a spacecraft before the end of 2025 to collect a 100-gram sample from the surface of comet 67P, which was mapped by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, and return it to Earth in 2038.

...

Says they'll announce the winning mission in July 2019. Me, I rather hope we're landing on Titan.
 

cornflake

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When will we go to Europa -- whennnnnn?
 

Kjbartolotta

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ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.
 

cornflake

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But... but... Europa is the one with the alien squids and stuff.

:e2fish:
 

Kjbartolotta

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As opposed to Kraken Mare on Titan? :)

I suppose it's a close running between Titan and Europa for which has more opportunities to support alien life, I think the odds are pretty bad in both cases but who knows. What makes the Saturn system so interesting is it's long term viability towards habitation, if we ever settle the outer planets it will be there we start, and Titan being a churning mass of hydrocarbons will probably help with that.
 

blacbird

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As opposed to Kraken Mare on Titan? :)

I suppose it's a close running between Titan and Europa for which has more opportunities to support alien life,

And Enceladus. There is one very important practical difference between Titan and Europa, however: Titan has a thick atmosphere, which makes parachuting landing feasible. It has already been done once. We've never landed anything on a body with an icy surface and no atmosphere, which makes for big challenges, technically. Titan is farther away than Europa, but probably an easier mission, all things considered.

caw

caw
 

Friendly Frog

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I think the fact that Europa's presumed liquid body is also covered under a layer of ice. It would ask a lot of a probe to reach it. Whereas Titan's liquid lakes and rivers are open and accesible. Just think we could have a tiny submarine in a Titanic lake within two decades... (Okay, so I read it would be a lander, don't burst my bubble.)

Although I suppose that going back to 67P would probably be more productive in learning more about the formation of the solar system.
 

Friendly Frog

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I know, that's why I said 'liquid' and not 'water'. Still, would be cool for a drone to take the plunge there, no?