Curiosity Rover on Titan?

[Moontanman]

Could a copy of the Curiosity Rover be sent to Saturn's moon Titan? Would this be far more difficult to do? I have read, some place, that once you get out of the Earth's gravity well you can go anywhere in the solar system with the same or close to the same amount of energy, time is the factor that changes.

 

Would the Curiosity Rover survive on Titan or is Titan too cold? I know Venus is a hard nut to crack but is the cold of Titan a similar barrier?

[RVJ]

My assumption is that the rover would not be able to survive the conditions on Titan. The rovers batteries' electrical current would come to a trickling halt in the freezing temperatures. The rover would definitely need some source of heat to protect the batteries.

[Moontanman]

My assumption is that the rover would not be able to survive the conditions on Titan. The rovers batteries' electrical current would come to a trickling halt in the freezing temperatures. The rover would definitely need some source of heat to protect the batteries.

 

 

I was under the impression that Curiosity was nuclear powered...

[iNow]

I was under the impression that Curiosity was nuclear powered...

It is.

 

 

[Moontanman]

Well then the next Curiosity should be on Titan

[JMJones0424]

Could a copy of the Curiosity Rover be sent to Saturn's moon Titan? Would this be far more difficult to do? I have read, some place, that once you get out of the Earth's gravity well you can go anywhere in the solar system with the same or close to the same amount of energy, time is the factor that changes.

 

This doesn't seem right to me at all. Once you've escaped the Earth's gravity, you still have to contend with the sun's. If what you say is true, there'd be no need for the slingshot maneuvers to add velocity to probes going to the outer solar system. In this table, wikipedia lists the escape velocity with respect to the Earth at the surface of the Earth as 11.2 km/s but escape velocity with respect to the sun on Earth is 42.1 km/s.

 

Would the Curiosity Rover survive on Titan or is Titan too cold? I know Venus is a hard nut to crack but is the cold of Titan a similar barrier?

 

The extremely cold temperatures of Titan would seem to me to be significantly more of a materials engineering challenge than the temperatures experienced on Mars. But I am no materials engineer, and don't where to look for confirmation of that hunch. The Huygens probe landed on Titan in 2005, but it was only designed to operate for 90 minutes and wasn't a rover. Perhaps someone here knows what the specific engineering difficulties would be in landing and operating a rover on Titan?

[Moontanman]

This doesn't seem right to me at all. Once you've escaped the Earth's gravity, you still have to contend with the sun's. If what you say is true, there'd be no need for the slingshot maneuvers to add velocity to probes going to the outer solar system. In this table, wikipedia lists the escape velocity with respect to the Earth at the surface of the Earth as 11.2 km/s but escape velocity with respect to the sun on Earth is 42.1 km/s.

 

I am not in possession with the tools to figure this out for sure but the slingshot thing is for speed to save time, we have never escaped the Sun's gravity well. Well the pioneer probes have but as long as they stay within the solar system we do not have to achieve the escape velocity of the Sun.

 

But my point is that if we can send Curiosity to Mars we could send it or one much like it to Titan as well. Titan is an interesting place for sure. Do we really need to send several probes all increasingly bigger and complicated or could we just skip over the small probes and start out with a Curiosity type rover?

 

 

 

The extremely cold temperatures of Titan would seem to me to be significantly more of a materials engineering challenge than the temperatures experienced on Mars. But I am no materials engineer, and don't where to look for confirmation of that hunch. The Huygens probe landed on Titan in 2005, but it was only designed to operate for 90 minutes and wasn't a rover. Perhaps someone here knows what the specific engineering difficulties would be in landing and operating a rover on Titan?

 

I look forward to knowing how difficult it would be as well. My money is on Titan would be much easier to survive than Venus.

[padren]

Once you get an object into Earth orbit, it is effectively cruising around the Sun once every 365.25 days already, and even the smallest impulse in the right direction should be able to push it slowly out of the solar system over a Very Long Time, but if you want it to happen within a lifetime it's really handy to use slingshot maneuvers, etc.

 

 

My main concern about Curiosity on Titan would be the cold and humidity - it's much harder to maintain a working core temperature if there is near continuous contact with very very cold liquid methane rain and even very very cold free floating atmospheric particles than if you need to simply stay warm in a vacuum.

 

 

I think the entire design would have to be rethought to reduce the surface area to volume ratio of the rover. Arms may be able to be extended for a short time to do work, but long thin arms are basically highly efficient heat sinks... not good for Titan.

 

 

I'd like to see a probe designed to break the ice of Europa - if there's liquid water, that's warm enough to go swimming in what may be the most unique environment capable of supporting life in the outer solar system.