Plumbing the depths of Ligeia: Considerations for depth sounding in Titan's hydrocarbon seas

Saturn's moon Titan is the only satellite in this solar system with a dense atmosphere and hydrocarbon seas. The Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) mission would splashdown a capsule to float for 3 months on Ligeia Mare, a several-hundred-kilometer wide sea near Titan's north pole. Among TiME's scientific goals is the determination of the depth of Ligeia, to be achieved with an acoustic depth sounder. Since Titan's surface temperature is known to vary around 92 K, all instruments must be ruggedized to operate at cryogenic temperatures. This paper's contributions include an approach to infer key acoustic properties of this remote environment and the extraterrestrial environment's influence on the development of a cryogenic depth sounder. Additionally, an approach is formulated to infer the transducer's response, sensitivity, and performance when in situ calibration is impossible or when replicating key environmental conditions is too costly. (C) 2013 Acoustical Society of America.