On August 20 NASA will send a submarine to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean

NASA remains determined to be the pioneering agency on Earth for space exploration and the discovery of new life forms. To carry out this work, the famous United States Space Agency has decided that the time has come to take a new step and literally take a submarine to the bottom of the pacific ocean.

As those responsible for this project have announced, officially christened by NASA with the name of Subsea, it will start the next August 20, the date on which the submarine is expected to submerge and begin to shed all kinds of data that will later be meticulously processed, not in vain, this mission is very focused on serve as the basis for future projects related to the search for extraterrestrial life.

The Subsea project starts, which will serve as a base to search for extraterrestrial life outside our planet

If you are more or less up to date and you know the steps that NASA is taking, surely you will know perfectly why a mission like this is launched. The end of it is none other than the existence of different moons like Europe, the icy moon of Jupiter, or Enceladus y Titan, moons of Saturn, which in recent months have attracted the attention of many astronomers and scientists.

The idea is to be able to develop as far as possible and within our own planet some type of system or mechanism, equipped with highly specialized instruments, with which to study conditions in liquid water which has just been discovered on the moons mentioned in the upper lines, especially in the case of Titan, where water is on the surface.

The idea of ​​sending a submarine to Titan is not new, NASA already told us about this project about three years ago

The idea of ​​developing this platform is by no means new, especially in the case of NASA, an agency that about three years ago presented to the world its a project that precisely sought to take a submarine to Titan. As is often the case with this type of project, it was planned in the very long term, specifically to bring a submarine to this moon of Saturn, initially, there was talk of 2040 as a feasible date.

Before that date finally comes, NASA must be burning stages and one of the first is to start testing our planet, tests that must be carried out under different conditions and using different types of technologies, not in vain the truth is that we do not know what we are going to find once we get to Titan so we must assume any type of condition.

In this way, and without making too much noise, the NASA Subsea project starts, in which a first submarine will be sent directly to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, specifically in the vicinity of the largest island of Hawaii, in order to test the instrumentation with the one that tells this first prototype that will have to face extreme pressure and temperature conditionsIn addition to this, the mission will be used to study biology in the deepest parts of the ocean.

In his first mission, Subsea must descend to a hydrothermal vent in Hawaii

Among the few data that have been officially published, we know that the main objective of the mission is explore the bottom of a hydrothermal vent which has a temperature of hundreds of degrees due to the great volcanic activity in that region. In turn, the submarine will be used to study tolerant organisms and bacteria to these very particular conditions for which topographic, environmental and chemical observations will be made.

Without a doubt, we must recognize that this type of project, although the main purpose is something else, will not help us to know our own planet much better. Even so, we must remember that we are only before a first step, a series of tests that will be completed just when next year NASA send a submarine to the bottom of the ocean again although, on that occasion they will use a 24 minute delay in communications in order to try to simulate the time it would take to send an order to a hypothetical submarine that was truly on Titan.

Further information: NASA