NASA specialists and Washington State University researchers are developing an outer space submarine, which they hope to send to Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons and the second largest moon in the solar system.
The Titan Submarine is scheduled to be sent to explore Titan's freezing hydrocarbon seas within the next twenty years, and its design is still being updated, according to a Washington State University press release published on the website phys.org.
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"The submarine that the agency is designing will have to operate autonomously. It will need to study atmospheric and ocean conditions, move around sea beds, and hover at or below the surface," the press release said.
This will certainly be a hard nut to crack, given that the temperature drops to —300 Fahrenheit (-184 Celsius) in Titan's oceans where the concentration of ethane and methane can vary dramatically.
That's why researchers re-created a Titan ocean in a laboratory to specifically understand how the heat emanated from the submarine would affect its hydrodynamic characteristics.
They also developed a special video camera and an optical device called a borescope, capable of withstanding low temperatures and high pressures.
The past ten years have seen NASA using unmanned Cassini spacecraft to obtain data for exploring Saturn's numerous moons.
