Would You Ever Want to Travel To Saturn’s Moon Titan? This Space Plane Might Make That Happen

Flight is easy on Titan, but how do you fuel a plane off-world?

Transcript

00:00NASA is planning a lot of trips out into the solar system in our search for life and one

00:08of the top contenders is Saturn's largest moon Titan Titan has an atmosphere in fact

00:13it's even denser than Earth's and it has liquid water right on its surface despite

00:17its extremely cold temperatures so if we do ever travel to Titan how will astronauts get

00:21around the moon well possibly in one of these this is the new concept art for the Titan aircraft a

00:26space plane that will ferry people around looking for life but it's more than just a plane that can

00:31fly on another world it's being built from the ground up to use Titans atmosphere as fuel Quinn

00:35Morley part of aerospace think tank planet enterprises who came up with the concept had

00:40this to say about it this Titan flyer concept aims to drink in methane condensation and organic

00:45material through a permeable section of leading-edge wing skin he says they're developing

00:49capillary features on the wing itself they collect and ingest the methane from the air then using it

00:54as fuel and since Titan is less than half the size of Earth with a thick atmosphere flight is a breeze

00:59apparently and it has plenty of lakes to land on the idea has now been awarded one hundred and seventy

01:04five thousand dollars as part of a NASA grant to be further developed