Let's go sail on the moon - no, not our moon, Saturn's

5:48 AM Mon 21 Dec 2009 GMT

'Lakes on Titan - Ligeia Mare is 250 nm across' .

It must take the prize as the most outrageous idea of 2009, but a professor at the University College London is suggesting that the way to explore Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is to go sailing on one of her lakes, and the scientific team behind the idea is about to propose it to NASA.

The lake they have in mind is Ligeia Mare, a vast body - not of water, but of liquid methane - which is located in the northern hemisphere of Titan.

'It is something that would really capture the imagination,' Dr Ellen Stofan, from Proxemy Research, who leads the study team, told the BBC's Jonathan Amos .

'The story of human exploration on Earth has been one of navigation and seafaring, and the idea that we could explore for the first time an extraterrestrial sea I think would be mind-blowing for most people,' she said.

The Cassini mission currently in orbit around Saturn has confirmed the haze-shrouded moon Titan to be an extraordinary place, and the suggested mission is almost impossible to imagine for this poor sailor on earth.

Titan, like the Earth, has great lakes, which are fed by rivers that wash down valleys whenever it rains. However, because of the frigid temperatures on Titan, it is not water - H2O - but liquid hydrocarbons that form the rain and the lakes on Moon Titan.

Scientists got a few brief hours worth of data back from Titan's land surface in 2005 when the Huygens probe touched down in an equatorial region of the moon.

Now a number of those same researchers are desperate to go back for a longer-lived stay, but to investigate this time the huge pools that contain methane, ethane, propane and probably many other types of hydrocarbon (carbon-rich) compounds.

The imaginative proposal envisages a cost of 'only' $425million to bring to fruition, and would be ready to launch in 2016. After swinging a few times around the earth, it would fly by Jupiter and then splash down in Ligeia Mare in 2023 - a journey of 'only' seven years. There'll be plenty of room for the vessel to move around - Ligeia Mare is around 250 nautical miles across.

...and I am still saving up for an AIS for that long weekend sail I'm planning for next May.

by Des Ryan