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NASA officially greenlights $3.35 billion mission to Saturn’s moon Titan
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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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.
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.
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.