A new submarine built to explore oceans of liquid methane on Saturn’s moon,could be our best hope of finding life within our solar system, NASA believes (Picture NASA)

A new submarine built to explore oceans of liquid methane on Saturn’s moon,could be our best hope of finding life within our solar system, NASA believes

NASA engineers showed off details of the vehicle in Florida this month – with a planned launch to Saturn’s moon, Titan in 2040.

Titan, a moon of Saturn where 300-foot dunes of frozen chemicals roll across the surface could offer a better chance of finding the origins of life than Mars, scientists have previously suggested.

The drone submarine weighs a tonne, and would explore the freezing oceans of Titan for 90 days – transmitting data back to Earth using a huge fin-like antenna.


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‘The direct transmission of worthwhile amounts of data over a billion miles to Earth requires a large antenna, implemented as a planar phased-array dorsal fin,’ NASA said.



The mission could unlock an environment believed to be one of the likeliest places for alien life to exist within our solar system.

Recent research has provided fascinating hints that liquid water may exist deep under Titan’s surface.

A new submarine built to explore oceans of liquid methane on Saturn’s moon,could be our best hope of finding life within our solar system, NASA believes (Picture NASA)

Other data suggest that areas of Titan’s seafloor may be similar to areas of Earth’s seafloors where hydrothermal vents exist.

These passways into Earth’s interior spout hot, mineral-rich water that fosters an array of once-unknown forms of life.

The catch is that Titan, nearly a billion miles from the Sun and a little larger than the Earth’s own moon, is mostly frozen. It only receives about 1 percent of the sunlight that Earth gets. As a result, it is unimaginably frigid.

At minus 180 Centigrade its water ice is rock solid, at least on the surface.

And the rivers and lakes? They are made of liquid hydrocarbons, ethane and methane, which on balmy Earth are the main components of natural gas.

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