Fun Science FRIEDay – Au Revoir Cassini

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Kersey Sturdivant

Roughly 20 years ago the Cassini orbiter launched from Cape Canaveral for a seven year journey to the ringed planet Saturn. Towing with it was the Huygens probe, built and maintained by the European Space agency. On its journey to Saturn the orbiter flew by Venus through the asteroid belt, past Jupiter with its giant red eye, before finally arriving at Saturn. After spending countless years investigating Saturn and its moons, today is the culmination of that journey as Cassini begins its death orbit down into Saturn.

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Cassini was a triumph of science and engineering, sending back amazing views and increasing the state of knowledge in astronomy. Cassini discovered two previously unknown moons orbiting Saturn (bringing Saturn’s total known moon count to 60), discovered ice plumes from Enceladus (another Saturn moon) via magnetometer, and detached and sent the Huygens probe down to the surface of Titan (Saturn’s largest moon). The landing of Huygens on Titan is the first and only landing on the surface of a world in the outer solar system.

Cassini orbiter sees Earth from Saturn (Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A journey across Titan’s largest methane sea.

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Andrew Thaler

You asked for a map the clarify the journey of Calliope, the Salvager, and others as they sail, fly, and walk across Kraken Mare, Titan’s largest methane sea. Here, for your pleasure, is a map of the journey across Kraken Mare from A Crack in the Sky above Titan.

titanmap

Read A Crack in the Sky Above Titan, available now.

Check out the first chapter, here: What is it like to sail across Titan’s methane seas?

A selection of space nerdery from your favorite ocean blog.

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Andrew Thaler

coverTitan This Monday I launched A Crack in the Sky above Titan, a science fiction adventure framed around the seemingly simple question: What is it like to sail across the methane seas of Titan?

While Southern Fried Science is all about ocean science and conservation, we do make the occasional foray into space. From celestial navigation on Mars, do diving robots on Europa, to exploring other (fictional) worlds to learn something about our own, we haven’t shied away from the ‘other’ final frontier. So, in honor of A Crack in the Sky above Titan (available now on Amazon*) here is a selection of our favorite space nerdery from Southern Fried Science.

(Note: Some of these are from our month of ocean science fiction. While the framing for these pieces is fictional, the science itself is sound)

The Extraterrestrial Ocean: Could OpenROV Trident explore the seas of Europa?

Our planet is an ocean, and it is almost entirely unexplored. OpenROV, and their new Trident underwater drone is one of many tools that will help change that by democratizing exploration, conservation, and ocean science. We are poised atop the crest of a wave that may change how humans interact with the ocean as profoundly as the invention of the aqualung.

Earth is not the only body in our solar system that hosts an ocean. As we (slowly) venture out into the stars, could OpenROV Trident dive in extraterrestrial seas?

What is it like to sail across Titan’s methane seas?

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Andrew Thaler

coverTitan A simple writing prompt–what would it be like to sail across Titan?–has taken me on a 20,000-word journey through the intricacies of life on Saturn’s largest moon. Join the Salvager on a journey across Kraken Mare to land the score of a lifetime, if the rest of the universe doesn’t get in their way. Discover the weird, wonderful world of Titan and her coastal colonies and confront the challenges of sailing across an alien world.

A Crack in the Sky above Titan takes a lot of the ideas developed during Field Notes from the Future and extends them out into the extremely distant future. At what point do humans, heavily augmented with hardware and software, stop being human? What rights are retained when a person contains no human parts? How does art evolve in a future obsessed with technology? And how exactly do you sail via celestial navigation with no polar star and an atmosphere of dense haze.

In honor of this new launch, my other novella, Prepared, an adventure in doomsday prepping, seasteading, and catastrophic sea level rise, is free to download all week long.

A Crack in the Sky above Titan.

Read an excerpt from my latest novella, below: Read More

The Extraterrestrial Ocean: Could OpenROV Trident explore the seas of Europa?

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Andrew Thaler

OpenROV Trident

Our planet is an ocean, and it is almost entirely unexplored. OpenROV, and their new Trident underwater drone is one of many tools that will help change that by democratizing exploration, conservation, and ocean science. We are poised atop the crest of a wave that may change how humans interact with the ocean as profoundly as the invention of the aqualung.

Earth is not the only body in our solar system that hosts an ocean. As we (slowly) venture out into the stars, could OpenROV Trident dive in extraterrestrial seas?