Up with this kind of thing
Imagine HD video of Titan.
NASA is drawing up plans to send a robot out into space to either drill into the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – or checking out Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The two proposed missions are still in their very early design phases, and were chosen from 12 ideas submitted in April to the American space agency’s New Frontiers …
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It's not NASA doing that tracking, its NORAD. NASA lacks the right kind of radar installations to do the job properly. But yes, it is still a (military) government agency, and they seem to be doing quite a lot more Santa-tracking these days than I remember from years gone by. Probably they get really bored during that long arctic winter...
The old story that I heard (not sure on its authenticity) is that the NORAD santa tracking started due to a misprint on a poster. Something along the lines of a company (I believe it was a large American department store) had a phone number that kids could call and be given updates on where Santa was, unfortunately when they printed posters to advertise this they put the number for NORAD rather than the actual number which was very similar. Naturally, it was a popular service and NORAD were very confused by being contacted by small children asking about Santa's whereabouts. As a result they then started doing it themselves and with the advent of the internet have made a few updates to their santa tracking website.
Like I say, I'm not sure if it is true, but it is a nice story regardless.
Your comment triggered my Autistic curiosity to analyse this. I think the answer is no.
The thermocouples in an RTG generate electricity from a temperature differential, which is presumably what led you to this idea. Bigger temperature gradient = more power.
However, the radioisotope in the generator is not inherently "hot". It doesn't have a particular temperature, it just generates heat from radioactive decay at a rate that correlates with the half-life. If that heat is not transferred away somewhere, the temperature increases, but an RTG works by utilising that heat.
I would expect the temperature of the isotope in an RTG to find an equilibrium at some margin above the ambient temperature of the environment it is in, the point at which the thermocouple is removing the same amount of energy (as electricity) as the radioactive decay is generating (as heat).
I had a chat with an engineer at Teledyne about burying an RTG on the moon for better heat dissipation and he told me that it would work better than trying to radiate heat from the cold side into space. It's possible to use Carnot heat equations up to a certain point and you are probably correct that since the Pu isn't an infinite heat source, the curve would flatten out at some point.
Now I need to find the book and papers on RTGs and have another look.
The biggest problem is sourcing the Pu isotope. The reactor that was used to generate it was decommissioned and I believe restarted a couple of years ago, but the process is very slow and the separation moderately tedious. No, you can't make bombs out of the isotope used for RTGs. The US bought up all of the stock that Russia had and that's all been used.
That's being developed. I've seen some TV shows that featured various designs of the equipment that could be used being developed at different universities. I expect that it will be a while before somebody can assemble a big enough radioactive source that will provide enough heat to melt all the way through the ice cap in a reasonable amount of time. We might need to send a couple of earlier probes to get some soundings on just how thick the ice really is and the best area to work from. Will working through one of the assumed "cracks" be more dangerous than starting from an uncracked region?
Given that the Indians managed to send an orbiter to Mars for $74 million (I'm still seriously impressed by that), maybe NASA should consider outsourcing the projects, then they could afford both of them, and probably have enough left over to establish a call-centre on Phobos.
Would a balloon or dirigible not be a better option for Titan? Use an RTG to heat the 'air' to keep the thing going for a long time rather than relying on stored helium. the atmosphere is methane but there isn't any O2 to make it burn and gas laws are pretty universal.
I'd love to see a lander on Europa or another ocean moon too. Drilling down to the water probably isn't feasible but checking the surface for organic debris that might have been ejected would be cool.
I'd love to see far less military wastage and more space probes. If the world could move away from the oil nipple, we could let places like the middle east rot instead of handing them our hard earned cash. Those retirement villas on the moon need to be started right away so I have a chance at moving there before I can't take the acceleration anymore.