What’s the News: NASA’s considering launching a boat from Earth, hurling it 746 million miles through space, and plopping it onto one of the minus-290 degrees Fahrenheit methane oceans of Titan. This mission to Saturn’s largest moon would the first of its kind to probe an alien ocean and—depending on the weather conditions—could be the first spacecraft to witness extraterrestrial rain. If the proposed mission beats out two other finalists, it could launch within the next five years. “Titan is an endpoint [in] exploring … the limits to life in our solar system,” project leader Ellen Stofan told New Scientist. “We’re going to be looking for patterns in abundances of compounds to look for evidence for more complex or interesting reactions.”
The Mission:
If the mission, dubbed the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME), lifts off in 2016, it should reach Titan by 2023 and then parachute onto one of its large lakes, such as Ligeia Mare or Kraken Mare. These lakes are prime destinations because, unlike most of Titan’s lakes, they ...
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