A low-cost flying boat mission, with a focus on atmospheric and lacustrine science, could target specific important questions that remain untargeted by any currently funded or planned titan mission…

This federal contract award from NASA's Shared Services Center is funding a research and development effort by Planet Enterprises, a for-profit aerospace and space technology company, to develop an aerial science platform for conducting atmospheric and lacustrine (related to lakes) research on Titan. The $174,462 grant will support the design and testing of a "Laker" craft that will use passive fluidic systems to collect atmospheric samples for analysis. This effort aims to unlock new scientific exploration capabilities that complement existing and planned Titan missions. No set-aside designation was used for this award.

A low-cost flying boat mission, with a focus on atmospheric and lacustrine science, could target specific important questions that remain untargeted by any currently funded or planned titan mission (national academies, 2022, 2-68, Q6.3D, Q6.4, Q6.6, Q10.4B barnes, 2021). Such a craft could serve as a relocatable lake lander (hereafter, laker, after the ships of america s great lakes), with an airborne duty cycle target of around 25%, enabling daily hour-order flights. We aim to unlock access to this cutting-edge science with a flying laker. We describe in this paper an integrated, fluidics approach to aerial atmospheric science. Condensation of methane and suspended complex organics can potentially be ingested through a porous or permeable aircraft leading edge and coalesced via passive capillary features before delivery to the science payload as a continuous fluid stream (see figs. 2 & 5 for approaches to this). The operational change from aircraft to laker should be natural, allowing atmospheric and lacustrine science operations to complement each other. IT may be possible to transition in a seamless manner between the wing-mounted system and inlet ports beneath the waterline. Continuous analysis techniques from the biomedical and environmental industries could be leveraged (bolze, 2019 droujko, 2021). The mechanics of liquid collection via a permeable (or perforated) leading edge are driven by capillary action. IT may be possible to amplify the ingestion rate using an active or passive negative pressure in the wing. Once inboard, liquid is collected in capillary features and coalesced further by a spanwise collection rod, which mimics the collection methods employed by cacti (JU, 2012). An experiment to demonstrate this system at a small scale in microgravity is in preliminary design stages. Figs. 3 & 4 show an early scale model test of the capillary collection and coalescence system. In the figures, the ingestion perforations and the collection rod taper are neglected. An option for coalescence and transport could be an array of v-groove channels each featuring a variable capillary gradient (FIG. 5). A third option is promising: by leveraging the strong capillary force between a flexible membrane and rigid structure (cambau, 2011), an inflatable wing skin liner could be used. This could offer resiliency and mitigate sludge buildup problems.