NASA is developing a nuclear-powered drone called Dragonfly to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The mission is scheduled to launch in June 2027 and arrive at Titan in 2034.
The Dragonfly drone is a car-sized, eight-bladed quadcopter that will make short flights around the surface of Titan. It will study Titan’s unique atmosphere, low gravity, and complex chemistry. The mission will also collect samples from Titan’s surface.
The Dragonfly drone is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) mounted in a cylinder on the back of the drone. The RTG supplies power to rechargeable batteries. The drone can fly at about 10 m/s and reach altitudes of 4000 m.
The Dragonfly mission is expected to last for nearly three years. It will study how organic compounds formed, and if Saturn’s moon currently has life or ever had.
The Dragonfly drone’s RTG uses plutonium-238 as its power source. The RTG supplies power to rechargeable batteries. The batteries store 70 W of power.
The drone’s batteries are recharged during Titan’s 8-Earth-day night. The drone is designed to hop between locations, allowing scientists to study multiple sites.
Yes, the Dragonfly mission will use an 8-rotor drone to fly on Titan. The Dragonfly drone is the first multi-rotor vehicle that NASA will fly for science on another planet. It has eight rotors, one on the top and bottom of each of four arms. The drone is about a meter high and 3 meters across. It weighs between 400 and 450 kg, which is roughly the size of the largest Mars rovers.
The Dragonfly drone uses advances in computing and aircraft design that have led to the explosion of hovering drones on Earth. It will fly to dozens of promising locations on Titan looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and Earth
The Dragonfly drone will launch in June 2027 and arrive at Titan in 2034. It will take seven years to reach Titan. The spacecraft will perform a gravity assist flyby of Venus, and three passes by Earth to gain additional velocity.
The Dragonfly drone will arrive on Titan under a parachute, soft-landing on frozen terrain. The drone will use maps created by NASA’s Cassini mission to “leapfrog” around the distant world in flights lasting as long as 5 miles (8 kilometers). In total, the spacecraft may fly more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) during its first mission
The Dragonfly mission is NASA’s first attempt to land a flying robot on the surface of another planet. The mission is expected to cost up to $850 million. It involves 35 scientists from around the world.
The University of Idaho researcher who envisioned the mission is part of the team. The mission beat out nearly a dozen other proposed projects, including one to collect samples from a nearby comet( source google)
NASA’s Dragonfly mission will study Titan’s habitability and search for signs of life. Titan is the only moon in our solar system with a thick atmosphere. It’s also the second largest moon in the solar system. Titan’s atmosphere is rich in organic molecules and has lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane. It also has an interior ocean beneath its surface.
The Dragonfly mission will study:
- Prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and Earth
- The potential habitability of an extraterrestrial environment
- Biosignatures indicative of life based on water as solvent and even hypothetical types of biochemistry
The Dragonfly mission will also search for evidence of past or present life on Titan.
Titan’s atmosphere is of interest to scientists because it acts as a chemical factory, using energy from the Sun and Saturn’s magnetic field to produce a wide range of organic molecules. Titan’s atmosphere is also extremely dense, even thicker than Earth’s atmosphere. It’s mainly composed of nitrogen gas.
Scientists are interested in Titan’s atmosphere because it:
- Has all the ingredients for life
- Reminds them of how Earth was billions of years before life existed
- Serves as a model of cloudy bodies
- Allows scientists to understand the atmospheres of distant systems
- Has a methane cycle just like Earth’s water cycle
- Has a weather pattern similar to Earth’s
The presence of methane and nitrogen in Titan’s atmosphere could allow their component atoms – carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen – to potentially exist and recombine to form a rich variety of organic compounds
Scientists believe that Titan could support life because it has many of the elements necessary for life, including:
- A dense atmosphere
- Complex organic molecules
- Liquid methane and ethane
- A liquid water ocean under its icy crust
Scientists believe that the mixing of organic material and liquid could have caused complex molecules to develop, or possibly life itself.
Some scientists believe that life on Titan would likely be very different from Earth’s life. They think that life on Titan would be based on carbon biochemistry in a medium of liquid methane and ethane. If there are living organisms in the lakes or oceans, they are very likely to be single celled, perhaps even simple plants like algae or lichens. There may also be organisms resembling mollusks or fish in the oceans
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