Adam said:
"Huygens mission manager Jean-Pierre Lebreton said he would now
like to send robotic explorers like Nasa's Mars rovers to Titan.
...nix the solar panels though."
Designing such a rover would be an "interesting" engineering challenge. Right off the top it needs to have RTGs because the solar light intensity is too low. That means the rover is warm because RTGs produce a fair amount of heat. Now we have a warm rover going over an ice / liquid ethane slush. Wheels are probably not an option because it's slippery "mud". So now we have a rover on tank treads. That means lots of warm moving parts in a dirty cryogenic environment. How are we going to flight qualify the hardware? With MER they spent years tweeking rover designs running prototypes around in the Mojave desert. Where on Earth are they going to find a test environment of ice crystal mud soaked in ethane? I don't think rovers are an option for Titan. Instead, it'll be helicopters for short distance surface study and balloons for long distance surface study. That leads to the next discussion: How do you design a robot helicopter to fly on Titan? All of this will be hard to do and expensive.
Gary
Space/Science » in reply to Methane Rivers
Designing a Titan rover would be "interesting"
