>> Stephanie Marcus:
I'm Stephanie Marcus
from the Science, Technology,
and Business Division
here at the Library.
I want to welcome you
to our lecture today.
We are going to spend a
day on Titan and it's going
to be really cold so you L.L.
Bean parkas are not going
to do you any good at
minus what, 288 degrees?
>> Melissa Trainer: Fahrenheit.
>> Stephanie Marcus: Fahrenheit.
Which is what we're
used to [laughter].
Yes. So this ought to be fun.
Recently we were cleaning
out our files in my Division
and they were really old.
But we're trying to be way
modern, so we're throwing
out all the old things
and keeping a few things
that looked interesting
for historical purposes.
And I took the Saturn folder
and it was filled with pamphlets
from NASA on the Pioneer mission
and the Voyager missions,
and I found one on
Titan and I --
actually there was a Washington
Post Special Supplement all
about Titan.
And it was dated December, 1980.
So none of you -- well, at
least your kids were not here.
And I just want to
read you what it said.
Near the end it says, "Titan
has now become a prime candidate
for a future space mission.
One idea already being toyed
with is to put a spacecraft
in orbit around Titan,
and then float a balloon
in its atmosphere,
and land a small robot
on its frozen ocean surface.
If Carl Sagan is correct,
and the ocean is liquid,
the robot lander would radio
that fact back before it sinks
into the ammonia and water seas.
Can a mission like that --
can a mission that
difficult be made to work?"
Well, you probably heard
that last year the
Cassini-Huygens mission ended
with the spacecraft plunging
into the atmosphere of Saturn.
But in 2005 it had
landed the Huygens' probe
on the surface of Titan.
So today we have Melissa
Trainer from NASA who has gotten
that data and has
been working on this
and can tell us what
she has learned
and what they plan
for the future.
I'll have to tell
you who she is.
She's a Research Space Scientist
and the Associate Lab Chief
of the Planetary
Environments Lab at NASA Goddard
out in Greenbelt, Maryland.
She earned her BA in Chemistry
at Franklin and Marshall College
in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and
then got her PhD in Chemistry
at the University
of Colorado Boulder.
So please help me
welcome Melissa Trainer
to the Library of Congress.
[ Applause ]
>> Melissa Trainer: All right.
Well, thank you, thank
you so much, Stephanie,
and to the Library of
Congress for inviting me here.
I'm so delighted to be here and
to be talking to you all today.
And I'm just so excited about
the audience that I have here,
including all of your students.
So, thank you, guys, for
spending part of your trip
to the Capitol here
listening to my lecture.
So as we just mentioned,
we've learned a lot
about Titan since 1980.
The vision of a mission
architecture that was described
in that article of the
orbiter and the balloon
and the surface lander didn't
totally come to fruition.
But I'll discuss a little bit
about what the Cassini-Huygens
mission was
like and what it found.
Spoiler alert -- no
oceans of methane
or ethane all over the surface.
But there are lakes near the
Pole, so there were places
that we could have
splashed down.
So I'm going to spend some
time talking about the science
of Titan, what we've
learned about Titan,
and then what are some
future exploration options
for our next step to
learn more about Titan.
And that's a mission
concept that's currently
in work right now
that I'm a part
of called the Dragonfly Mission.
So I'll give you
one group's vision
of what we should be
doing at Titan next.
So, information about Titan.
It is the largest
of Saturn's moons.
There are 62 of them, but
you can see in this sort
of family portrait that
it is the largest by far.
And it was discovered originally
in 1655 by Christian Huygens,
the namesake for the
probe that we sent there.
And it's actually the
second largest moon
in the whole solar
system after Ganymede,
which is a moon [inaudible].
The assertion of Titan,
harkening back, again,
here's the name of term Voyager
when Voyager did its flyby
through the solar system.
Voyager One, and we could
see there was previous data
that there was likely
an atmosphere
around Titan just based on how
it looked through telescopes
or ground-based observation.
And that was confirmed in
1944 by retrieving spectra
of the moon that showed gases
were present in the atmosphere,
and that includes methane.
And then we got this photo
here, and you can see, you know,
Titan looks like
this fuzzy ball,
and then we can see these
layers up high in the atmosphere
that tells us that there's not
only gases in the atmosphere
but also solid particles.
You can think of them as
sort of a haze or a smog.
And this comes from
photochemistry that takes place
up high in the atmosphere.
And so this kicks off
this idea that Titan is --
well, we like to think of
it as this organic factory.
We have some methane
gas, so that's CH4,
carbon with four hydrogens.
And then there's nitrogen and
the chemistry that's induced
with those gases,
with either sunlight
or energetic electrons coming
in the top of the atmosphere,
starts this synthesis of these
really large organic molecules.
And we're only just sort
of learning what they are.
But because of that you have
organic chemistry abound.
And we think about habitability
and what it might be important
for life in location and
our planetary environment.
That's one of the
big criteria we think
of because we know our
own biochemistry --
you and me and the trees and
everything that we eat is made
up of carbon chemistry and
so we think that that is
at least one view of what is
needed for life as we know it.
And so Titan is, you
know, abound in it.
Mars we're going and we're
looking for little tiny pieces
of it in the rocks,
but Titan's full of it.
The other thing that's
cool about Titan is
that it's actually the only
moon in the solar system
that has a substantial
atmosphere at all.
And what's interesting is
it's also mostly a background
of nitrogen gas which should
sound somewhat familiar
because that's the
background gas that we have
in the Earth's atmosphere
here, too.
Let's see.
It's mostly nitrogen, has a
few percent of the methane,
and then, also, some hydrogen.
As I mentioned, it's
the only satellite
that has a dense atmosphere.
You can see here's
the -- is Ganymede.
That's the one that's
just slightly bigger.
These are the Galilean
satellites around Jupiter.
And it also has the second
highest surface pressure
of all the solid bodies.
Okay, so what does that mean?
Its surface is actually
greater than Earth.
It has a denser atmosphere
than Earth -- 1.5 times.
If you were standing on
the surface of Titan,
it would be 1.5 times the
pressure as we experience
on the surface of Earth,
much less so than Venus.
Venus is the winner
of the terrestrial bodies
in our solar system.
But many of the other
bodies compared to here,
Mars has a much thinner
atmosphere and then the moon
and Mercury, et cetera, are
considered airless bodies.
Exploration of Titan,
as we discussed --
Pioneer fly-bys in '79,
Voyager One and Voyager 2
in the early '80s
were able to fly-by
and get images such
as you see here.
This look that Titan has
in this type of view --
it's sort of this
fuzzy orange ball.
That was all we could
see for a very long time.
And that's because of this
haze, these particulates
that are in the atmosphere.
The atmosphere is very
thick and it's hard
to see down to the surface.
So we think often of Titan as
having been behind a veil prior
to the Cassini-Huygens mission
when we were really able to get
up close and personal
and get an idea
of what was hiding underneath.
And this is why we weren't sure.
Maybe, you know, some
chemical model suggested
that the whole surface
could be an ocean.
And we weren't entirely sure
what we were going to find
on the surface until
we were able to go.
There was some imaging
showing surface features
with telescopes.
And these were both taken after
Cassini either had been designed
or after it was on its way
and at Saturn just
showing differences
in the surface reflection
and giving us an idea, okay,
it's not a homogenous surface.
Something -- there are
some differences here,
but we don't really
know, well, what are they
and what is the surface made of?
This -- here are just
some facts for Titan,
just to give you an idea of --
the average diameter is
about 5000 kilometers.
The surface gravity, I
always like to mention that.
It's about 1/7 that
of Earth, right?
So if you weigh something
like 150 pounds on Earth,
You'd weigh 21 pounds on Titan.
And everything else
would feel lighter.
The surface pressure I mentioned
is greater than that of Earth.
And [inaudible] it's very, very
cold there, so I often think
in Kelvins when I go
to low temperatures
as a temperature
unit -- 94 Kelvins.
What is -- so the rest of us,
you think about weather, right.
Minus 290 Fahrenheit would be
the temperature there, yes.
So you're going to need a lot
more than a North Base parka.
And then the other really cool
thing -- because it's so cold,
I love this Earth
analogy for Titan.
The bedrock there is
actually made of water ice
and not silicate rock
like we have on Earth.
So you can think of it in
some ways as an equivalent.
So it's so cold that the frozen
water is as hard as rock,
but if you had some
kind of volcano --
we'll talk about cryovolcanoes
-- or lave erupting,
instead of it being molten
rock, it could be water ice
or other liquids that
contain a water composition.
So there's a lot of similarities
to the way that rock we have
on Earth, water ice on Titan.
And that's going to
become important later
when we talk more about
prebiotic chemistry.
Another thing the
Cassini mission didn't --
it wasn't an orbiter around
Titan, but it did do many,
many fly-bys and I'll show
all of those in a moment.
We discovered that Titan is what
we would call an ocean world,
and that's because it has an
interior liquid water ocean.
And we could just tell this
as the orbiter is flying by
and making very precise
measurements with how far it is
from Earth and how it's kind
of getting tugged and pulled
by the tidal forces
around Titan.
We could see that it has
variable tidal forces
which tells us there is
liquid in that center.
And, as I mentioned,
making an analogy to Earth,
in this case it would be liquid
water or primarily liquid water.
And so this cross section
is our current prediction
of what we think that
interior looks like.
So you would have a
global subsurface ocean.
It would be covered
in this ice shell.
We're not sure how
thick that is.
And that is sort
of what we think
of as bedrock or the crust.
And then we have this atmosphere
making all these organic
molecules, and those
rain down on the surface
and they coat the surface
sort of like a soil,
so you've got this
organic soil on top
of this really frozen water ice.
And, again, I mentioned
habitability,
and we mentioned things where we
consider ingredients for life --
organic molecules and other
nutrients are a part of that.
But water is always
part of that, too,
at least for life as we know it.
And Titan always inspires
conversations about life
as we don't know it, but we'll
put that over here for now.
Is that now we've got organics
and we have this potential
for some kind of liquid water to
be mixing with those organics.
And that starts to sound a
lot more about what we picture
in a habitable environment.
But it's very, very cold, so
we'll talk in a minute about,
well, how do you
actually get that mix in?
So a little bit more info
on the Cassini orbiter
and the Huygens probe.
So this picture here, you see
with the person for scale --
this is the probe inside
its little air shell.
And then here it is bolted
to the side of the orbiter.
The orbiter is huge.
And there's sort of a desk
chair and a desk down here.
That gives you a little
bit of a sense of scale.
And then this is a diagram that
just points out where several
of the scientific
instruments are.
So, again, the Huygens
probe is on the side.
Cassini was an orbiter around
Saturn, and then when it got
into the right position
it launched
that probe towards Titan
and then used the rest
of its instruments
to study Saturn
and the whole Saturnian system
for the time that
it was in orbit.
This shows all of the orbits
that Cassini made around Saturn,
all these different lines.
And I tried to highlight
here the Titan's orbit.
So Saturn's here in the middle.
Here's Titan's orbit.
So you can see many of those
fly-bys were near Titan
at different distances.
And every time it got close
to Titan we had the ability
to do imaging or
radar measurements
or compositional measurements
of the upper atmosphere.
And that's how we've learned
everything that we could,
and these numbered 126
close fly-bys of Titan.
So the fly-bys we consider
that were sufficient
to get a lot of good
information.
So [inaudible] the
year Saturn and Titan.
So Saturn's years 29.5 or our
Earth years, so close to 30.
And Titan travelled to Saturn
so Titan's year is
the exact same length.
Saturn has an axial tilt
that also provides Titan's
tilt relative to the sun.
And so because of that, Titan
is going to have seasons just
like we experience
here on Earth.
They're just going
to be a lot slower.
So you can see these dates here.
The Northern Winter
Solstice in October, 2002,
and they didn't get
to the Spring Equinox
until 2009, right?
So that's a really
extended year.
Titan's day is defined by
its orbit around Saturn.
And another fun fact, that
Titan is tightly locked
in a synchronous rotation
with Saturn which is similar
to our own moon to us.
So if you were -- you can't sit
on Saturn, but if you could sit
on Saturn and gaze
at Titan in the sky,
you'd always see the
same side of Titan just
like we always see the
same side of our moon.
So this graphic here kind of
shows the orbit of Saturn and,
therefore, Titan
going around the sun.
And what the Cassini
mission looks like in terms
of a single Saturn year --
you see, it didn't even
complete that full year.
This is kind of another
fun way to think about it.
You won't be able to read it,
but this gives you the idea of,
again, from the perspective
of a Saturn year, if we relate
that to our year, it says if
Cassini arrived in mid-January
and crashed into
Saturn in late June.
So, again, not even a full year.
Just a part of what it was like.
So when we think about observing
long-term trends, you know,
we hadn't really even been
there for an entire year.
So a lot of times
when we see something,
we can make predictions
about how it might repeat.
But Cassini itself is
not going to be able
to satisfy our knowledge
for whether
or not those predictions
are correct.
Here's some nice views of Titan
with the imaging
science subsystem.
This is a full-color image,
again, you see that orange ball.
But if we look at certain
key windows in the spectrum
where we can see all the
way through that atmosphere,
past those particles, down
to the surface, you can start
to see some more
surface features.
Here's another view.
The VIM Spectrometer, Visual
Imaging Mapping Spectrometer
that we've used to learn as
lot about the Titan surface.
So depending and
wavelengths you're looking in
and how you're studying it is
how we've been able to sort
of penetrate that
veil that I mentioned
to learn more about Titan.
Here's a map that was generated
at the infrared wavelengths,
and we'll call out some more of
these features in more detail.
But, you know, this is how
we start to get a picture
of what Titan is actually like.
All these differences between
dark and bright are places
where the light is either
reflected strongly or absorbed.
We infer a lot of information
about compositional differences.
We may not know exactly what
this material is, but we can say
that this is not the
same thing as this
because they look different,
right, in this image.
One thing -- a couple
of things we'll notice,
and I'll show closer pictures,
that we have this band
of darker materials
across the equator, right?
We can see small features
that start to look
like craters in there.
And, again, not a global ocean.
You can kind of see in this
image some peppering, though,
of what we discovered
were lakes near the Poles,
especially near the northern
Pole -- larger seas, really.
This is another image
using radar.
So we overlay radar measurements
on those visual images
and that gives us better
information on the topography
and where something might
actually be a different altitude
or have a different
roughness in addition
to just having a
different light interaction.
So here's one of the
really cool things we found.
Looking at those belts
around the equator,
we found sand dunes.
And, you know, we
all experience --
many of you may have been
near sand dunes on Earth,
so you kind of have a feel
of what sand dunes are like.
Now on Titan, the sand, again,
isn't going to be a
ground-up silicate rock
like we're used to on Earth.
In this case, what we suspect
it is is the organic material
that's raining down,
these particulates raining
down from the sky, and some kind
of interphysical interaction
might lead to them growing
into larger particles
and blowing around
and forming these
dune structures.
Maybe there's some water
ice mingled in there.
Again, we're not entirely
sure what they are,
but we can make a lot
of inferences based
on their direction and how they
are shaped and how they move,
about how big they might be,
because we have some ideas
of how windy it can be on Titan.
And so here just some -- I
just love some of these images.
They're a little harder
to see on the projector.
Hopefully those of you --
the screen can see better.
So we have this whole
narrow belt of sand dunes.
Then again under these
sand dunes, in places --
interdune spaces, sort of
where the sand dune comes down,
we expect that there's access
to that water ice bedrock
there in-between those.
We also see impact craters.
Now Titan has a very thick
atmosphere which is going
to slow down and burn up
enough small impactors
that you're not going to
get peppered dots everywhere
like you do on places
like Mercury
or the moon and airless bodies.
So on Titan we only see impact
craters that are pretty large
that made it all the
way to the surface.
And then the other
interesting thing again,
because Titan has this
dense atmosphere, we know --
we already see sand dunes,
so we know there's sort
of the interaction of wind
erosion on the surface.
We learned that it rains
on Titan occasionally.
In this case it rains
methane rain, not water rain,
because Titan's so cold
that methane, actually,
is the substance that can appear
in ice and liquid and gas.
Because of that we
have the ability --
Titan has the ability to erode
things like impact craters.
So then we can study these
impact craters and learn
about how they've been
transformed over time possibly
by the Titan environment.
And, again, for a lot
of us, we're talking
about crazy things --
methane rain and organic sand
and maybe cryovolcanoes
of water and ammonia.
So it sounds really exotic,
but at the same time,
these are very familiar features
and very familiar processes
to those of us who study the
Earth and study other planets.
And I think that's probably
why I love Titan so much,
and why people are so
fascinated with it.
And so with an impact crater,
what we expect happened is
you have an impact and, again,
if you have enough energy put
into that water ice crust,
just like on Earth you could
get melted rock in an impact.
On Titan you'd get melted
water coming from the impact.
And if it's a big enough impact
and you deliver enough energy,
you could have melted water
present on the surface
for actually really
long periods of time.
Maybe 10,000 years, depending --
more than that, depending
on the size of the impactor.
So as cold as it is, we
do have this possibility
that there have been
periods in the past
with transient liquid
water on the surface.
And so, again, let's
take all those organics
that are made in the atmosphere.
Maybe they're around
their coating surface
when this impact comes in.
And now you've got a melt pool,
and you have this potential
for a lot of interesting
chemistry.
Here's some other
tectonic features.
We know that we see
mountains kind
of along here in these areas.
Here's some others.
They're not super tall
mountains, although this one,
actually 10,000 feet,
that's nothing to sneeze at.
That's a decent size mountain.
So we see a lot of topography
on the Titan surface.
So this idea of -- cryovulcanism
is one of the things --
I heard someone say you can say
it in a room of Titan scientists
and you'll start a fight
because no one can agree
on whether it happens or not.
But it's certainly possible.
And so we've been searching
for evidence in imaging data
and the radar data to see
if it's possibly there.
This is one feature that's been
pointed to as possible evidence
where we see what looks like a
central dome and possibly flows
that are overlaying
and interfering with
dune structures.
And so that could be a
potential cryovolcano.
And, again, we're
interested in that
because that's another
opportunity --
melted water coming out
and over onto the surface
or water-ammonia mixtures.
So as cold as Titan is,
there's this potential
to have water coming out and
then placing on the surface
and interacting with
the environment.
This shows a different view
of what that image looks like.
Again, what looks potentially
a volcanic crater in there.
And we see channels.
We see lots of channels that
we can grow the evidence
of fluvial action, so rain
coming down and forming streams,
and flowing into maybe temporary
lakes or seas on the surface,
depending on the season.
This is one of of my
favorite ones here.
I mean, if I just
change the color
on that you couldn't tell me
that that wasn't Earth, right?
A river channel on Earth.
But in this case it would
be liquid methane raining
on the surface and
flowing around.
And again, we discovered
lakes and seas, particularly
around the North Pole.
This is a good image here.
This lake here, Lake
Giamari [assumed spelling],
is pretty close to the size
of Lake Superior in
the United States.
This is a very --
lake or sea, you know,
it depends on your perspective.
But it's a very substantial
body of water.
And these other ones
down here have connectors
where it's actually a
significant system there.
I actually -- years and
years ago, as part of --
Mission helped us
to study [inaudible]
that was really a boat that
was flushed down into one
of those lakes and flowed
around take measurements.
So the Huygens probe,
that was another way
that we got a view
of the surface.
This was a probe
that was released --
it's from Cassini and floated
down through the atmosphere.
Titan, you see partly
on parachute
and landed on the surface.
And it took measurements,
chemical measurements,
and images on its whole way down
and then it lived on the surface
for about 70 minutes afterwards.
And this is one of the
main photos that it got
from the surface, kind of
sitting and looking out.
And these pebbles that we see,
these are thought to be, again,
made of water ice,
that have been eroded
into round pebbles somehow.
And I think this one is
probably just a couple
of centimeters across.
You know, very -- you know,
skewed perspective looking
from just the eye
camera of the lander.
And here's kind of a fun
image showing the moon,
an equivalent type perspective
of the moon surface
with a similar scale.
So that gives you an idea that's
a footprint, what size that is.
We've also noticed,
as I mentioned, rain,
cloud and weather patterns.
Because Titan has
thick atmosphere
and it has the methane
which serves as a similar
to a hydrological cycle
on Earth, we see things
like convective clouds and
thunderstorms and rain events.
And we were actually able
to witness this image.
So it's clouds.
And I don't think I
have a picture here,
but we were actually able
to witness a rain event
through observations of Titan
where you could see kind
of a cloud come in and then
after it was gone the ground
looked wetter or darker.
And then after some
time, it looked back
to the lighter color again
which suggests, again,
soaking of the ground and
then drying out of the ground.
So, again, similar but
really different, right?
It's kind of a [inaudible]
a fascinating place.
And then again, get back to
the complex organic chemistry.
So this was hinted at even
before we arrived at Titan.
Just by looking at
the haze and looking
at the spectral features we
could tell there was some --
a lot of carbon and
nitrogen bonds in there.
And here by -- in
our fly-bys of Titan,
a lot of them were
actually close enough
into the atmosphere -- we have
an instrument called a mass
spectrometer that can
sniff in the gas as well
as the very small particles
and look at their composition.
And what we see, and
also visually see,
just lots of molecules that
kind of look like that.
And I don't know how
far any of you have gone
in organic chemistry, right,
so you've got all these
like the ball and stick
models here showing carbons
and hydrogens.
So you see things like propane
or -- that you might use,
you know, to barbecue,
acetylene,
hydrogen cyanide, right?
That's a -- not a good one.
We do see a little
bit of carbon dioxide.
Things like that we can
confirm definitively.
And then we also see what
this spectrum is kind
of telling you is
that there's a lot
of complex molecules
going far out.
They just get bigger and
bigger and bigger and bigger.
So as I mentioned,
this organic engine,
this big synthesis process.
But part of our questions are,
you know, these molecules,
and the kinds of things we make
when we just starting
adding carbons and hydrogens
and these long chains, right?
That's a lot more like gasoline,
like a gasoline slick you
might come across, right?
It's not necessarily we
think of when we think
of prebiotic chemistry.
And so part of our question
is at some point can we get
to the level of complexity where
you have more like oxygens going
in there, things that
look more like amino acids
or nuclear bases or the types
of molecules that we think
of as the kind of
complexity that's more similar
to biochemistry?
And that's just an open question
that we have about Titan again.
These measurements are made
about a thousand kilometers up,
way, way up, not at the surface.
This is another graphic
that kind of captures
where the Titan sits in the
[inaudible] system in terms
of this complex organic
chemistry, right?
It's actually got
the, other than Earth,
the most complex organic
cycle that we know
about in the solar system.
And so this is a comparison,
this graphic, of the level
of complexity of molecules
on these left bars in terms
of the size of how big they
are, that we've measured,
as well as the abundance.
And is you look at, you know --
Titan has a lot of molecules,
but they're pretty small.
So it's a place like Venus.
Venus has a lot of
carbon and carbon dioxide,
but not big molecules here.
Again, same thing for Mars.
Lots of carbon and
carbon dioxide,
but so far we've only measured
a couple of small molecules.
Earth we know.
Obviously we can measure it
the best because we're all here
with out fancy instruments.
But we know it has
big, big molecules,
the kinds of things
that -- in our DNA.
And Titan, again, we know
it has these really big
complex molecules.
We know it has a lot of it.
And then the question is, but
exactly what are they all like?
And can we find molecules in
there that might be of interest
to -- for more of the
prebiotic chemistry
and astrobiology perspective?
This is just again a cartoon
just to kind of bring it --
I keep saying it [inaudible].
So Titan is this
mysterious moon, right?
It's covered with all
these unusual materials,
these exotic materials.
They're talking about
methane rain.
You're talking about
ammonia water volcanoes.
But at the same time there're so
many features about it that are
so similar to our own Earth,
and we can study geology there
and learn a lot about
what's going on there just
by making comparisons
to what we already know.
And the atmospheric processes
and as well as this, again,
this methane cycle and how
often does it really rain and,
you know, do you get --
we've only seen a
small part of the year.
Do you have other periods --
do we have a rainy period maybe
where the south gets
lots of lakes and seas.
And then, finally,
we're interested
in seeing Titan parts
astrobiology perspective.
Again, carbon and water,
and we have sunlight.
We have all these ingredients
we tend to think of.
And one thing I'll point out.
You know, myself and lots of
other scientists love going
into lab and trying to
mimic the chemistry you
that you see on Titan.
So we build these chambers
and we radiate them
with sunlight or, you know,
blast them with electrons,
and we can make complex
organics.
They just kind of look
like that, that look a lot,
have a lot of similar
features to those,
based on what we
can see at Titan.
And what a lot of
experimenters have shown is
that if you take those complex
molecules and you put them
in water or water-ammonia
mixtures,
and you hydrolyze them, and
you're just very, very patient.
And so what we do is we tend to
run them at warmer temperatures
to speed up reactions that could
take actually like millions
of years or 10,000 years.
We know that we can see evidence
of a very interesting
prebiotic chemistry.
So things like amino acids and
nuclear bases has been shown
in the lab, that you
can make those things
if you just have those
organics sitting in water,
and you can wait a while.
And so we kind of want to know,
well, I can do that in the lab,
but it's not really
what's happening on Titan.
So where would we go to look
for this kind of biochemistry
or prebiotic molecules
or biomolecules,
whatever we want to call it?
So we'd want to look at
places where we think organics
and water have in
some way intermingled.
And so this is a very
complicated cartoon.
But it highlights
a couple of things.
So we've got this
possibility of our steep ocean
and our ice crust with
organics on the surface.
And if we have any cryovolcanoes
and cryolava I'm placing
on the surface, then
there's places
where it would intermingle
organics
and water on the surface there.
This doesn't show a
specific impact but I kind
of painted that picture.
If you have an impactor come in,
you have this impact
melt mingling
and more stuff depositing in it.
Then that's another place you
could expect to find evidence
of this kind of chemistry, maybe
in a frozen-over impact melt.
And then we also -- what
we really don't know --
we don't know is
there a connection
between the surface
and this deep ocean?
Like on Earth we have places
where there's volcanoes,
where there's what we
call subduction zones,
where you can then
have the cycling.
We don't know if
this happen on Titan.
We have no idea.
We don't even know how thick
this crust is, so we don't know
if there's places where kind
of you get any connection.
Or are they totally,
totally separated?
We don't know the
answer to that question.
But if there was some
kind of connection,
you could imagine some really
fascinating stuff going
on in this deep, deep ocean.
So the next step -- you know,
we have learned so much of this
from Cassini and from Huygens
that has basically just brought
us more questions, right?
Every time we go, we learn more.
That makes us want to
go back and, you know.
But now we know better some
of the things we're
looking for, right?
We know we're not
going to splash
down in a 10 meter [inaudible].
And so our next -- so we --
some of the questions
that we're asking --
I've kind of been
sorting to pose them --
what makes any planet
or moon habitable?
Is Titan -- what do we
call Titan habitable
from most certain perspective.
And what chemical processes
led to the development of life?
Carl Sagan, who was referenced
earlier, he really loved Titan
because we liked
to think about it
as this frozen prebiotic Earth.
So this idea -- if we could
go back to Earth billions
and billions of years ago,
before life was everywhere,
there might have been
a chemistry going
on in the atmosphere and on the
surface that resembled something
of what Titan's like today.
It's like if you took it and
you were able to move it way out
and just freeze it in place.
You know, we don't know for
sure is that is a true analogy.
But what we do know is that
at Titan we have evidence
of this immense global
scale organic chemistry
and all these fascinating
things that are happening,
but cannot ever get you closer
to a biochemistry or life.
We don't know the
answer to that question,
and we don't really know
how life formed on Earth.
But by learning what the
extent of that possibility is
in an environment that appears
to have all the ingredients,
that's going to teach
us a lot about what
that process looks like.
Now we make the case
that, like Carl Sagan did,
Titan is the ideal place
to go look for these things
because we do think we
have all the ingredients
for life as we know it there.
There's energy.
We know there's sunlight.
There's a lot of energy
deposited in the surface
of the top of the atmosphere.
And we have lots of organics.
We know we have abundance,
complex organics everywhere.
We also know we have a
liquid medium, right?
We always say, life needs water.
Life as we know it needs water.
That's the, you now,
that's the solvent
that all our biochemistry
takes like --
sorry, we're all just bags
of water walking around.
We're full of chemistry
going on.
So we know that there is liquid
water deep in the subsurface.
We think there are times that
it's been on the surface.
But there's also liquid
methane, and that gets us
into that whole other,
you know, Pandora's Box.
Well, what if you had
life and liquid methane?
And that's a really -- it's
a fun thing to think about.
It's a little harder
to think about.
Well, how would we know, right?
It's going to look
very different.
But there we can draw a lot
of parallels to what kind
of complexity and what kind
of patterns we expect to see,
and an advanced chemistry
that could be going
on in a different liquid medium.
And then there's also the
potential that the organics
on the surface are mingling
with that interior ocean
and that's another place
where you could look
for really interesting chemistry
taking place in liquid water.
And again, even aside from
this whole prebiotic chemistry
question, it's just Titan's
a fascinating place to study
because it's got
this methane cycle.
It's a lot like the
Earth's water cycle,
but it's different, right?
And it's going to have
its own differences.
And we can learn just a lot
about how planetary
systems operate in general.
And I don't know how many people
here are interested in things
like exoplanets, but as we
look out among the other stars
and think abut exotic worlds
around those other stars, right,
we want to understand
as much as we can.
We're just getting these little,
little dots of specter from them
to understand what they're
like, but we also want to have
in our back pocket
a while catalog
of understanding how
environments operate with,
you know, X, Y, Z conditions.
And so Titan -- maybe Titan
is the more prevalent type
of environment than an Earth is.
And we'd want to understand
what is that environment like
and learn more about
those planets out there.
So, again, this is sort
of this case that we
like to make is Titan itself --
it's an ocean world
and it's also this
fascinating laboratory.
It's already been doing these
experiments for us, right?
It's been producing these
organic molecules for millions
or billions of years, right?
It's had all this time to do
those reactions on the surface
that people are doing
in the lab.
And all we really just
need to do is go and try
to make those measurements and
sort of pick up the results
that Titan has already
been generating for us.
I always point out this.
I like this graphic.
It kind of shows what
do we know about Titan?
Here we know we have
complex chemistry,
upper in the atmosphere.
We think we can get small
biomolecules like amino acids.
But then can we get down
to anything that looks
like an autocatalytic system or
the complexity of biochemistry?
No, we really don't
-- we don't know.
But because we're this far on
this path, it gives us enough
of a reason to want
to go and find out.
Okay. So another
thing about Titan.
I mentioned those -- the
surface diversity you can see
in those images.
We don't truly know
what the composition
of all those surface
features are, but we do know
that there's a lot of different
kinds of surface features.
And we think of those
-- like on Earth,
there's different
geologic units, right?
What's the difference
between going to the desert,
going to the rainforest,
or going to, you know,
just here where we
live in Maryland.
We don't know what all
these places are, but we --
because we can tell that they're
different, we'd want to be able
to visit a variety of
locations to understand
which compositional units
might have the most interest
for habitability
or for prebiotic
chemistry environments.
And so the Huygens
[inaudible] --
of course, we landed in one
of them and it was there,
and it was wherever
it landed, right?
But ideally what we would want
is to go to all of these places
and to be able to visit
all of these locations
and understand how
they're different
and understand how they all
play into that story of Titan.
And so I think we've made
the big case is that mobility
on the surface is really key
to us fully understanding what
the different settings are like.
And what does that mean
for Titan's habitability?
So we do this on
other planets, right?
We do this on Mars.
We send rovers that can
visit different places
and aren't stuck in one spot,
and can take different samples,
and teach us something
about a location.
Our paradigm on Mars is
to rove, drive around.
It can cause problems sometimes
-- holes in the wheels,
if anyone followed the
story of Curiosity.
Although she's doing,
she's doing better now.
And also it's kind of slow.
I'm actually on the Science
Team for Curiosity as well,
and I'll tell you some days it's
like -- and that's it, right?
That's as far as
she goes in a day.
Titan, it turns out, has a
lot of advantages over Mars
which help us think a little
bit more out of the box.
I mentioned the atmosphere's
a lot denser than Earth --
between being colder
and higher pressure,
you actually have a
really dense atmosphere.
That makes aviation or flight of
any kind, whether it's airplanes
or hot-air balloons, makes that
a lot easier because, again,
it's easier just to go up.
The other thing is --
I mentioned the gravity
is a lot lower, and again,
as you can imagine,
if you were on Titan,
you could jump a lot higher with
the same leg strength, right?
So it's again, any kind
of airplane or whatever.
You would need a lot
less energy to get lift.
And so those are two things
that tell us it would be a
lot easier to fly on Titan.
This cartoon, which
[inaudible] can see,
kind of summarizes
what I'm saying, right?
On Titan you could
definitely easily fly,
just like you do on Earth.
Mars, much harder, right,
because there's just
very thin atmosphere.
It's really hard to fly around.
So we want to take
advantage of that.
We want to fly on Titan,
and that's how we could visit
all these different surface
locations, and we could cover a
lot more of the globe that way
if we're able to gain
that kind of mobility.
And so that's going to lead me
in talking a particular
mission concept.
This one is called Dragonfly.
It's a team I'm working
with to develop a concept
for the next round of
exploration of Titan.
It's not the only way you could
solve this problem, but it's one
that we're -- our team
is particularly fond of.
And the idea is that -- you see
in this image is
basically it's a drone.
It's a dual-quad copter
which is a fancy way
of saying it has eight rotors,
one on each corner, up and down.
And it's actually
not too different
in size from a Mars rover.
So it's big enough to carry
a full instrument payload.
But, again, because
there's a lower gravity,
the denser atmosphere, you're
able to move that payload
around on the surface
even as far as like tens
of kilometers apart in just
a short amount of time.
And so we'd be able to visit all
those different environments.
So, again, the idea is
not to fly all the time.
The idea is to hop, right?
So you go to a place and
you sit there for around --
you investigate it
very thoroughly.
Let's say we're in the dunes.
We would try to scoop
up some of that sand.
We're take meteorological
measurements
and see how windy it
is and watch and see
if we can see dune sands blowing
around to understand
what are they made of
and how often are
those dunes migrating?
And then, when we're
ready to move on,
we'd fly to a new
location and perform
that same in-depth investigation
at the new location.
So, again, most of the time is
actually spent on the ground,
but you have this
capability to move around.
All right.
So what would we
want to do there?
So the things that I
think you'd want to do
on the Titan surface are
sort of broadly listed here.
I've hit a lot on the
probiotic chemistry.
Needless to say, I got
my degree in chemistry
so that's where my focus is.
We'd want to look for evidence
in some of these environments
that impact craters, et cetera,
for the types of molecules
that could be relevant for life.
So, you know, I just mentioned
things like amino acids,
or a nuclear basis
that form our DNA.
We would just in general want
to understand the composition.
Maybe we land in an impact
crater melt, and we're able
to dig into that ice
and see what kind
of molecules could have been
formed when that was once water.
We would also be
looking for things
like patterns in molecules.
This is an abiotic pattern.
This represents something
you'd find in biology.
We see very specific
patterns in life on Earth.
And we'd also look for
things like chirality.
I don't know if people are very
familiar, but chirality is a lot
of molecules can be mirror
images of each other,
but they have a hand in it.
They're either turned --
we call them left-handed
or right-handed, right?
And so on Earth, in our
bodies, right, the amino acids
that we have are all biased
towards one side or another,
and we -- that imbalance
is a signature
that we believe is
specific to life.
And if you look, if you just
make amino acids, a synthesis,
or if you find them in
a comet or something,
they generally tend to just be
what we call a racemic mixture.
And that tilts it so
much one way or the other
as indicated on this graph.
And so we'd be looking
for any differences.
We don't know actually how
that arose in life on Earth,
and so we'd be just
looking for a difference
like that in this environment.
We'd also just want
context and composition.
Are we sitting on a giant
block of ice or not?
Are we sitting on a
big lump of organics?
What's around us?
What is everything made of?
We have a couple of ways that we
just get that kind of context.
One is a gamma ray
spectrometer that can sort
of bounce neutrons off of the
surface and investigate, again,
whether we are near a water
ice layer or an organic layer,
and get a general idea
of that composition here,
just as we're sitting
and sensing the ground.
And then also we'll -- when
flying around or or an up close
on the surface, to
get a lot of images.
And, again, images will
give us a good idea
for the geologic context.
Are we -- these are, you
know, dune features on Earth,
but we think that they're good
analogs for what exist on Titan.
We can see microscopically what
do the materials look like on
that surface, and how do
they compare to the types
of materials that
we think they are?
And are they sticky or
are they like powdery
like cornstarch, you know?
What are those materials like?
And then we also have a
package for meteorology.
We would want to do winds and
temperature and just learn more
about the environment for
an extended period of time.
And geophysics, the
ability to kind
of sense what is the
ground surface like as well
as maybe penetrate and get an
idea of interior structure,
and can we get a sense of
how thick that ice layer is.
So all the things that you
can only do on the ground,
up close and personal, right?
You have to be there
on the surface.
So this particular mission
concept is in consideration
by NASA under what we call
the New Frontiers Project.
So if it were selected
next year,
then what would happen is
we would launch in 2025,
so it gives us time to build it
and get it ready to launch it.
And we would not arrive
to Titan until 2034.
So half this audience here --
you guys should do that math
because you would probably
be like primely set
up to be a major contributor
to the Science Team
for this mission by the
time it actually showed up.
People like me, you know, I'll
be all old and grey by then.
And the idea is we want to
land in those inter-dunes,
those dunes we talked about,
those dunes near the equator.
And we'd want to look at the
dune material and we'd want
to look at those
interlayered dunes
where we can get the right icy
and it would actually be not
that different of a location
from where Huygens landed.
And so what's nice about
that is we know something
about that area because
the probe landed there
and we have lots of good images.
But then once we're there,
the probe actually does its
own reconnaissance, the lander.
Because it's able to
fly it could go up high,
look around itself, you
know, you picture a drone,
and then it can come back down.
Then it can go up high and fly
a little this way, fly it back,
come back to the same place.
But now we've mapped that route.
It's a very high resolution.
And now we know, okay,
that place over there
is a safe place to land.
And that's how we could
do hops along the surface
without necessarily having
super-high resolution imagery
from orbit.
You don't really
need an orbiter first
if you can do your
own mapping, right?
And so that's kind of how the
mission -- you can pick your --
leapfrogging itself
around the surface.
But eventually migrating to all
of these different
types of surface places.
So one thing I --
having any questions on
and I thought I might --
maybe for this audience I want
to mention the new discovery
coming back from Titan recently.
It's actually -- you can't
read the dates on these,
but it's not that new data.
But the example of Cassini --
we're going to have
discoveries coming from Cassini,
even though it's crashed into
Saturn, for years and years
and years and years, because
there's always so much data
that we collect at
planetary bodies.
And it takes a long time to
understand it and to process it,
and sometimes it takes a new
person to come along, again,
one of the students here, and
[inaudible] may be 10 years
from now we'll look at it and
say, huh, this is interesting.
I have a question about this.
And dig in a little deeper
and learn something new.
People are still doing that with
Voyager data, with Galileo data.
So once, you know, it's going
to -- being in a library,
mentioning that, right?
Once this data has
been collected,
it's archived for everybody.
NASA archives all of this data.
And then for -- future
generations can still look
at that data to try
to understand
as much as we possibly can.
So, this is an example of
something, data from back
in 2009 and 2010
has been looked at,
and we think there
was a dust storm.
Now we just came out
of a dust storm on Mars
with a Curiosity rover, so
this is something that's --
for many of us who work
on multi-planets --
something that was
already on our minds.
As I [inaudible] there
could have been a dust storm
on Titan as well.
And that just comes from
looking at spectral features
that brighten and darken, but
then based on the location
and the type of movement
that we've seen and trying
to model it and understand it,
this idea that this could have
been a dust storm that created
with something -- winds
higher than normal.
In this case, on Titan, that
would be something about four
to 25 mile-- per-hour winds
lofting up that dune material,
we think, or organic
dust, and blowing it
around in this location.
The artist's concept
is on the right.
It's kind of a fanciful
view of what this might look
like if you'd been sitting on
Titan looking at the dust storm.
And so this is the kind
of thing -- we don't --
the surface mission
that I'm talking
about may not actually
experience that.
It's in part because
the thought is
that it would only occur
during the Equinox.
You have to have the solar
energy crossing the equator
to trigger the right conditions
to generate these winds
to make this storm.
So that wouldn't time exactly
right with our mission concept.
But that prediction could
be wrong, too, right?
So it's possible that future
missions that do go either
in orbit around Titan or on the
surface might observe similar
features to this.
[Inaudible] that's
pretty cool new news.
But never fear about
the Dragonfly lander
if we win because,
much like Curiosity,
we're not solar-powered.
We're nuclear-powered.
And so if there were a dust
storm we wouldn't have to worry
about dust covering
our solar panels.
And like Curiosity, you
just kind of sit there
for a little bit and wait.
And eventually you can
start moving again.
All right.
So, again, just in summary,
Titan itself is a
really fascinating place.
I think the more we learn
about it, the more we want
to go back and learn more.
And this particular mission
concept you've described,
and I have a little video, is
one way that we could do that.
I think it's a really exciting
way that we could explore Titan.
And so I'm keeping
my fingers crossed
that we get to fly Dragonfly.
And -- oh, I don't know if
I mentioned the duration,
but we would be there for over
two Earth years on the surface.
So, again, it would
be very similar
to like a Mars rover mission,
just taking a lot of time
to learn a lot about the
surface there at Titan.
I just want to reference --
if you want to learn more about
that mission in particular,
and also some more about Titan,
there's this website here.
For the Dragonfly mission, sync
to the Mission PI, Zibi Turtle,
who provided a lot of
these slides for me.
I don't want to take
credit for [inaudible].
And then I wanted to show a
quick video, if I can figure
out how to do this
on a computer.
Kind of a fun video to
imagine what it will be like.
I think so if the bars go away.
So this is the [inaudible]
coming in, landing,
and it would sort of fly itself
down to the surface and cruise
through the interdunes.
It wouldn't have its own
camera drone following it
around though.
We would just get the
first person perspective
through all the imaging
on the drone itself.
Then land.
Put up its antenna
to talk to Earth.
Do surface science or for
science surface science.
And then decide where
it's going next.
And then take off and fly away.
So before I open up to
any questions though,
I also want to mention -- okay,
Titan's a moon of Saturn, right?
We all have our own
beloved moon that we can see
up in close -- much more often.
Next October -- next
Saturday, October 20th,
unfortunately I don't have
a lot of these to hand out,
but is International
Observe the Moon Night.
This happens every
year and they do --
there's groups all around the
globe taking time to look up
and observe the moon and
think about lunar science
and accomplishments of humankind
and visiting the
moon, et cetera.
And there's a hashtag,
hashtag observe the moon,
or moon.NASA.gov
[inaudible] observe.
And if you're interested,
I can share that.
I apologize I don't
have more handouts.
But I recommend for everybody --
those of you who are
local there are big events
up at Goddard Space
Flight Center.
But for those of you who
are not, you should look
into this [inaudible].
There's other events all over
the place to celebrate the moon
and I know at Goddard we're
doing fun activities to think
about lunar science and
maybe cratering experiments.
And they always do
something with candy
because everyone loves candy.
So that's one big thing.
And then in the back, for
those who didn't get them,
I did bring some handouts
with images of the moon.
We're coming up this anniversary
of the Apollo Program,
50th anniversary.
We're hitting lots of
different milestones
with the history
of that program.
And celebrating, again,
that accomplishment.
And then everything that we've
learned about the moon since
and lunar missions since then.
And please feel free to
pick those up at the back,
and they all have pretty
pictures of Saturn, too,
my favorite image of Saturn
with the clip seeing the sun.
It kind of looks like
it's glowing from behind.
So, with that, I'm happy
to take any questions.
>> I just want to say thank you.
If you would repeat
[inaudible] --
>> Melissa Trainer: Okay.
Yes
>> Please ask your questions.
>> Melissa Trainer: Yes.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Oh, good question.
Okay. So the question is, how
long is Dragonfly expected
to last, and why didn't they
Huygens lander last longer?
So I'll answer the
second one first.
It was not designed to.
So Huygens was actually --
it was designed as a
probe, not a lander.
So the idea of it having --
it was on batteries and
had enough battery power
to make measurements that
took about two hours to float,
I would say float, because
it seemed so gentle.
And Mars, we just
like crashed in.
Float through them, take
chemical measurements
and visual measurements
while it went down.
And then everything we got on
the surface was not guaranteed
because at the time it really
was thought it was possible it
would just splash into
an ocean and drown maybe.
And so it actually lasted
longer than it was expected to.
Dragonfly itself --
I'll give a caveat
to any questions
about this mission.
It's under competition
still, and so there's a limit
to what I can say about it.
But the planned nominal
mission is over two years,
and we always add many
design factors on that.
And so it will be designed to
last much longer than that.
Yes.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Mm-hmm. So the question is,
we know that there's
things like wind.
We know there's a
thicker atmosphere.
And so what kind of
impact could that have
on an organic material
blowing around on the lander?
And how does that compare
to Mars and the things
that the -- the rovers?
So the biggest difference
there is just the density
of the atmosphere.
Because there's a
denser atmosphere,
there's more energy in the wind.
But, in general,
with the exception
of this potential dust storm
that we think we observed,
the winds on Titan are
expected to be fairly low,
about less than one
meter per second,
particularly in these areas.
It's been -- it's not
meant to be weaseling out,
but it's something that the
experts in Titan meteorology are
on our team and are actively
engaged in the design
and making sure that
it would be robust
against any of those conditions.
The most important
thing to remember is
that we aren't flying
most of the time.
Most of the time we're just
sitting on the surface.
And so, like any good pilot
would, we will only fly
when conditions are
safe and appropriate
and the organic material
-- actually it --
the conditions of Titan and the
dust would probably not behave
that differently than dust
that's blowing around on Mars,
than silica dust on Mars.
Yes, definitely.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
So the question is about
contamination of moons
and planets and the types
of fuel that we bring,
and how will that be addressed?
So this is -- NASA handles this.
It's called planetary
protection.
And so there's an officer in
an office at NASA headquarters
that thinks about the
conditions that we observe
on different bodies
that we might visit,
and what are the standards that
we need to hold our spacecraft
to when we send them there
for concerns about things
like forward contamination.
And what's interesting is
all the different bodies
in the solar system
are classified
at different levels of risk.
And then you go to a place
like Mars and different areas
of the surface are classified
as different areas of risk.
So, for example, we have a --
the same nuclear power source
that we've proposed for this
drone on Titan is what's sitting
on the Curiosity rover at the
equator of Mars right now.
Because of where it's
sitting on the surface,
it's considered far enough away
from any potential liquid water
which is where microbes might be
living that it was deemed okay.
If you go further north
to the Polar Regions
where there are icecaps,
you wouldn't necessarily be
able to do that right now.
And then, depending
on where you go,
you're held to a different
standard of cleanliness
on just the material itself.
So it turns out that right
now, given everything we know
about Titan -- it's
at a different class
than these regions on Mars are.
And so we have a strict set
of procedures that we have
to follow for Titan,
and we're able to do
that with this mission.
It is possible that when we
go and we learn a lot more
about it, that we may find
out that maybe it isn't a
different classification.
But right now, based on
what we know, it's --
we have a set guideline
that we have to sort
of clean the Rover
to, and we're able
to use the nuclear power source.
Yes.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
That is definitely above my
paygrade question [laughter].
The question is, will there
be enough plutonium for us
to put it on this drone?
When the opportunity to propose
a mission was put out by NASA,
they said there would be,
and that we were allowed
to propose this power source.
So that's what we were
told, so we're hoping so.
That's kind of on upper level
NASA to work out for us.
Yes.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
That's a good question.
So the question -- I think
is that -- the question is,
are there places on the surface
where there could be a chance
of us actually witnessing an
eruption, a cryovolcano eruption
and then sampling that eruption?
I would say that we don't know
enough about the likelihood
or prevalence of cryovulcanism.
Again, some people don't
actually believe it happens --
it's sort of controversial --
to be able to predict that.
However, should be
stumble upon it,
that would be phenomenal, right?
A great opportunity.
So we can just hope, yes.
Back.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
It will be -- it's being
recorded, and so it --
the question is, is the
presentation online?
So if you're watching
online, you know the answer.
It should be recorded
and archived
and I believe the material
they'll be sharing as well.
Yes.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
So the question is, what is the
ultimate goal of this project,
the particular project
I'm pointing to?
And there were really
other expiration of Titan.
To find out what makes life
possible or just to learn more
about the solar system.
So the answer is yes, it's
all those things, right?
So that's what we're
always trying to do.
And every time we go to a new
place and we ask new questions
and get new data, we kind
of learn a little bit more
on all of those goals.
So the idea is this mission does
help to address our questions
about what makes
the place habitable?
What ingredients do
you need for life?
And where could we find them?
And that's all true of this
longer goal of are we alone
in the universe, right?
This is a big just human
question that NASA has taken
on as part of its mission.
And in the same time,
you're looking at that,
you're learning more
about the solar system.
And we're learning more
about environments.
And this is another thing
I would like to point out.
I may be a Planetary Scientist,
but my favorite planet is Earth
because I live here, and so
do all the people I love.
And every time we go out in
exploring new environments
in the solar system,
we actually learn more
about our own planet,
too, right?
Because we build all our models
and everything we understand
about how Earth works is based
on a datapoint of Earth, one,
right, and when we go to new
places and we get new data,
we can try to understand
how those fundamental
processes work.
And it's easy to
tell if we're wrong
if we make incorrect
predictions based
on what we think we understand
about how things work.
And so, actually, exploring
new planets and trying
to model new planets
is some of --
the most progress is made
towards better understanding our
own planet and our own climate.
So, all of those things I would
think of are part of the goals,
that this mission addresses
part of those goals.
Those are big, big goals
that we have for NASA.
But a great question.
Yeah.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Oh, such good questions.
Okay. Let me get the all right.
So, the question is, on Mars
we know the atmosphere has been
lost, stripped over time.
It doesn't have a [inaudible],
so the sun has stripped away
a lot of the atmosphere,
and that's party why it's a lot
colder and drier than it is --
than it was in the past.
How come that hasn't happened
to Titan, is one questions.
And, is there talk of
terraforming Titan?
So the top level answer --
Saturn has a giant
magnetosphere.
It actually interacts a lot
with the Titan atmosphere,
and we think that
that's part of where some
of the chemistry comes from
in the atmosphere of Titan.
So, partly Titan is
protected by that.
And -- but there's
a lot of things
that we don't actually
totally understand
about Titan's atmosphere.
So why is it so thick, right?
How has it held onto
that atmosphere
when it's got low gravity?
That's the big question
I always get.
Where did the methane come from?
And has it been there all along?
Or was it just there for a
temporary amount of time?
So there's a lot of
questions that we still have
about Titan's atmosphere that I
think we need more explanation
to be able to answer
has it always been?
Maybe it was thicker
and lost some of it.
You know, we don't really know
for sure the whole
history there.
Terraforming Titan would be
an enormous challenge just
because it is so cold, right?
And there's a lot of ways
-- you know, Mars, you know,
with all of its shortcomings
is -- it's closer to the sun.
It's still that more familiar
to Earth and there is --
you know, there is
water there, et cetera.
And it's sure a lot closer, so.
And if you caught it
will take us nine years
to get this mission
out to Titan,
and that's just the
small little robot.
Getting everything you
would need even just
to have a human presence
on Mars is daunting.
And so the idea of
getting everything
out there to Titan moreso, so.
But I'm sure there are people
thinking about it [laughter].
Yes.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Hmm. There are always
advantages to having humans
in an environment
doing the exploration
from the science
point of view, right?
You and I could walk over there
and take a sample and measure it
with an instrument,
you know, way,
way faster than the robot does.
And we also just with
all of our senses --
you know, it's impossible to
totally mimic that with any kind
of robotic [inaudible].
So there's a lot of advantages.
I forgot to repeat the question.
Are we thinking beyond Mars
to sending people to Titan,
which is -- sort of relates
to the terraforming question
and are there advantages?
So, yes, there would
be advantages,
but the Titan environment,
as I mentioned,
poses a lot of challenges.
It's extremely cold.
That's the biggest one.
And it's very, very far away.
So it would take a
long time to get there.
So until we, I would say, meet
and conquer all those challenges
for Mars, it's daunting
to think about that idea.
But it would be great.
I know people who'd
volunteer, for sure [laughter].
Any other questions?
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Mm-hmm. The question is, would
the flight plan, like this video
that keeps looping,
be predetermined
or determined from the Earth?
So we call that ground
in the loop planning.
All the planning for this type
of mission would definitely
be ground in the loop
because it would all be
based on the data we get
on the ground other
than the first landing.
Everything after that would
follow on the measurements
that we take, what we learn,
where we decide to go.
And it's much like
the model that we use
for the Mars rovers right now.
In the front, do you
have any more questions?