Thursday, April 15, 2010

Purdue Students Going to Titan


A quick little plug for my senior design class. Me and about 40 other astronautical engineering students have spent the past semester designing a mission to Saturn's moon Titan. If you are unfamiliar with Titan it is one of the most unique planets/moons in our solar system. It is the only moon with an atmosphere and has liquid methane flowing in lakes and rivers on it's surface. One of our vehicles will be a lake lander which will explore a lake of liquid methane twice the size of lake Superior! There are also thought to be cryovolcanoes on the surface. Instead of spewing molten rock, they spew liquid water. Because of the severe cold on the surface (-300F) chemical reactions occur much slower than on Earth. Because of this Titan's environment is thought to possibly represent a snap shot of what it may have been like on Earth just before the formation of life.

We will be giving our presentation next Tuesday, April 20th, at 10:30 am in STEW 214CD. Refreshments (FREE FOOD) will be available at 10am. And do not worry about the material being over your head. We have tailored our presentation specifically so that no matter what your background you will know what is going on.

So if you have ever wanted to know what Rocket Scientists do for a living, now is your chance.

Here is the facebook event page,
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114610135232180

You can view our website here including our final paper, all 1000+ pages of it.
https://engineering.purdue.edu/AAE/Academics/Courses/aae450/2010/spring

3 comments:

  1. As I'm sure you're aware, Kronos is the klingon homeworld, only it's spelled Qo'nos. NERD ALERT. This project sounds really fun and cool, when you get going to Titan, maybe I could come with you. I hear the weather is really nice this time of year.

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  2. Good luck on your senior design presentation! I teach so many aero students and had no idea the astro department was doing such intriguing projects for senior design.

    I'll be defending my master's thesis literally the hour before your presentation, so I won't be able to make it, but I hope you do well!

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