Nasa has announced that it will launch the dragonfly rotorcraft to study which moon of saturn

This illustration shows NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft-lander approaching a site on Saturn’s moon, Titan. Taking advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere and low gravity, Dragonfly will explore dozens of locations across the icy world, sampling and measuring the compositions of Titan's organic surface materials to characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment and investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry. (Image credit: NASA/JHU-APL) And they'll explore very different worlds. For example, Still, there could be room and reason for the two missions to work together, said Dragonfly principal investigator Elizabeth Turtle, of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. "There may well be some commonalities that we can leverage between the systems," Turtle said yesterday during a telecon with reporters. "And we were very excited to see the Mars Helicopter selected to fly, and rotorcraft on multiple planets." Flying around on an alien world will definitely be challenging, she added. But it's not a crazy idea, given that the core technology involved —highly autonomous rotorcraft — is very mature here on Earth. "We think what we're doing with Dragonfly is innovation, not invention," Turtle said. "We're applying technologies that already exist to another planet." And Dragonfly and the Mars Helicopter may be just the beginning. If the two drones perform well, rotorcraft could soon begin leaving Earth in relatively large numbers. "We envision ...

It will be the first mission to explore the surface of Titan, which is the only moon in our solar system with a substantial atmosphere and liquid on the surface that could potentially harbour life. It even has a weather system like Earth’s, although its rains methane instead of water. Dragonfly’s goals include searching for chemical biosignatures, investigating the moon’s active methane cycle, and exploring the prebiotic chemistry currently taking place in Titan’s atmosphere and on its surface. “Titan represents an explorer’s utopia,” said Alex Hayes, a Dragonfly co-investigator. “The science questions we have for Titan are very broad because we don’t know much about what is actually going on at the surface yet. For every question we answered during the Cassini mission’s exploration of Titan from Saturn orbit, we gained 10 new ones.” The Cassini probe, which was launched in 1997, orbited Saturn for 13 years, but Titan’s thick methane atmosphere made it impossible to reliably identify the materials on its surface. However, the probe did have a radar that enabled scientists to penetrate the atmosphere and identify Earth-like morphologic structures, including dunes, lakes and mountains, although their composition could not be determined. “In fact, at the time Cassini was launched we didn’t even know if the surface of Titan was a global liquid ocean of methane and ethane, or a solid surface of water ice and solid organics,” said Hayes. Cassini came equipped with a module known...

Dragonfly: An Overview of NASA’s Mission to Saturn’s Moon NASA will launch the Dragonfly mission this decade to explore Saturn’s largest Moon, Titan. In this mission a rotorcraft-lander named Dragonfly will explore dozens of locations across the icy world, sampling and measuring the compositions of Titan’s organic surface materials to characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment and investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry. Dragonfly will launch in 2027 and arrive in 2034. Dragonfly marks the first time NASA will fly a multi-rotor vehicle for science on another planet; it has eight rotors and flies like a large drone. It will take advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere – four times denser than Earth’s – to become the first vehicle ever to fly its entire science payload to new places for repeatable and targeted access to surface materials. Learn about the mission set to explore Saturn’s icy Moon: how we’ll get there; what we’ll do there; and how it could teach us about the building blocks of life in our February Thought Leader Series, presented by UTMB. About the panel Panelists for this event include Elizabeth “Zibi” Turtle, Dragonfly Principal Investigator, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL); Dave Buecher, Dragonfly Program Manager, Lockheed Martin; and Ralph Lorenz, Mission Architect, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Dr. Elizabeth (Zibi) Turtle Dr. Elizabeth (Zibi) Turtle is a planetary scientist at the Jo...

NASA's Dragonfly drone is headed for Saturn's largest moon, Dragonfly will be NASA's first interplanetary rotorcraft-lander probe outfitted with a full suite of scientific instruments, and will be capable of flying several miles between geological points of interest on Titan's surface. Currently being designed and built at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, Dragonfly is part of NASA's New Frontiers program, which includes the OSIRIS-REx probe's study of the asteroid Saturn's largest moon also happens to be the second largest moon in the solar system, with Titan weighing in just behind Jupiter's moon, Ganymede. As a planetary body, Titan is larger than Mercury, with an atmosphere quadruple the density of Earth's. Its size and lower gravity, paired with the moon's thick atmosphere make it the perfect candidate for a robotic explorer like Dragonfly. Another drone is already in-use by the space agency on the surface of Mars. Measuring only a few feet (about a meter) across its rotors, Ingenuity is only equipped with cameras and a few basic instruments to ensure vehicle health and flight performance. When Dragonfly arrives at Titan, it will be carrying an entire laboratory. Because of Titan's geological diversity, Dragonfly is being designed to test the gamut of the moon's properties, including its atmospheric composition and the chemical makeup of its differing liquid bodies above and below ground. (Image credit: NASA/JHU-APL) In addition, the dr...