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NASA officially greenlights $3.35 billion mission to Saturn’s moon Titan (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Negative 290f. Little past jacket weather. Will they have to stick a radioactive isotope in the thing to keep the batteries warm, I guess? Seems like a good and hard mission, right there. I want a picture of weatherproof methane aliens, damn it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Odds are they're using an RTG to power it anyways. Titan actually has a much thicker atmosphere than even earth and it's much farther away from the sun as well so solar isn't going to be a good option to power anything they send down.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

RTG would need batteries to be getting charged to meet power demands of flight, but I guess that should take care of the batteries being kept warm enough.