Robert Ballard, in the blue hat, helps ready the Hercules and Argus for their launch on Tuesday from the research vessel Ronald H. Brown. Associated Press

But tonight you can get a good look at the RMS Titanic on live TV. You won't have to leave the house. And it won't cost you a cent.

Maybe you're feeling richer already!

Airing on the National Geographic Channel, "Return to Titanic" will take you on a scientific quest led by Robert Ballard, the marine explorer who found the sunken ruins of that luxury liner nearly 20 years ago and has since been championing her cause.

"This is a Super Bowl with 14 live cameras," said Ballard, seeming almost as excited by the technology as by the expedition's overriding purpose.

But the real reason for the 11-day mission, he hastened to add during a recent chat, is for scientists to map the ship and measure its deterioration since he last visited with a film crew a year after its discovery on Sept. 1, 1985.

But the most thrilling part of the one-hour program is likely to be live transmissions from the bottom of the sea, courtesy of multiple cameras perusing the wreckage from a trio of robotic vehicles dubbed Hercules, Little Herc and Argus.

Dispatched to inspect the Titanic from various perspectives (including interior probes), these remote-controlled devices are tethered to the Ronald H. Brown by fiber-optic cable, with their high-definition video beamed to the watching world by satellite.

By comparing these newly captured images to film shot in 1986, "we can show you exactly what's happened in 20 years," Ballard said, "and then analyze the damage: Is that Mother Nature at work? Or is it the hand of man?"

But the condition of this famous wreck will convey a larger message.

"Our going back to the Titanic will get people to think not just about that ship, but about all human history in the ocean," Ballard predicted. "I believe there's more history in the deep sea than in all the museums of the world combined. But it's a free for all, and what's there is in peril.

"Can you imagine the Metropolitan Museum of Art being up for grabs, and anyone who enters it can take whatever they find?"

Since Ballard's science-driven quests in 1985 and '86, the Titanic, he said, has received only visitors bent on "making a movie, selling tours or plundering." So far, salvage operations have cost the Titanic more than 6,000 of its artifacts.

Ballard has long pushed for an international agreement to protect the Titanic and other shipwrecks as permanent memorials, with each of them available to visitors in a convenient, noninvasive way — through what he calls "telepresence."

On tonight's program, "I'm going to show you in the comfort of your home beautiful, high-quality live exploration of the Titanic without your having to go there," he said.