NASA gathered on Saturn's moon to look for life (3 photos)

Let's move on to space news.





While Boeing Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, stuck on the International Space Station, are sadly waiting for February, when they will finally be returned to Earth, NASA is not wasting time.

They are planning in full swing how in 2028 they will launch the Dragonfly spacecraft, and not to some banal Mars, but to Saturn's moon Titan. According to preliminary calculations, the ship will reach the Saturn system in 2034. Martians, breathe easy, the only threat to you now is Musk, and he has no time now, he is busy with the elections.



The thing is that recent studies have shown an interesting feature of Titan. Previously, scientists believed that its depths had long cooled, hardened and become static, but now it turned out that it is warm there. And if you consider that Titan's surface ice really does consist of water, then it is quite possible that life could have originated there.

And in general, we need to find out what is hidden behind the thick ice dome. Some scientists have put forward a bold hypothesis that behind the almost 10 km thick ice there may well be an atmosphere, rivers and seas. It is possible that this liquid is made up of hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane. However, Titan's surface ice is indeed made up of water.



A proposed diagram of Titan's interior (not to scale), showing a methane clathrate crust above a convecting ice shell.

"If there is life in Titan's ocean beneath the thick ice shell, any signs of life, biomarkers, would need to be transported up through Titan's ice shell where we can more easily access them and study them on future missions," said Lauren Schurmeier, the lead researcher and a University of Hawaii scientist.