Dragonfly Mission : NASA

GS Paper III Science and Technology

Context :

Recently, NASA greenlights the 2028 launch for its Dragonfly Rotorcraft Mission to Saturn’s organic-rich moon Titan.

It is Scheduled to be launched in July 2028 by NASA.
Dragonfly marks the first time NASA will fly a vehicle for science on another planetary body.
The car-sized “dual-quadcopter” Dragonfly rotorcraft, which is being built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, will reach Titan in 2034.
The rotorcraft has eight rotors and flies like a large drone.
It will cover tens of kilometers on Titan in under an hour, which is a massive distance as far as currently available extra-planetary rotorcraft are concerned.
It will fly to dozens of promising locations on Titan, looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and the early Earth before life developed.
It will spend most of its time on the Titan’s surface making science measurements.
It will use a radioisotope power system ( Because the hazy atmosphere on Titan will make it difficult to use solar power) like the Curiosity rover on Mars.

About Titan ( Moon of Saturn) :

It is an icy world whose surface is completely obscured by a golden hazy atmosphere.
Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system & Saturn’s largest moon.
It is the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, and the only place besides Earth that has standing bodies of liquid, including rivers, lakes and seas, on its surface.
- Like Earth, Titan’s atmosphere is primarily nitrogen, plus a small amount of methane.
It is the sole other place in the solar system known to have an earthlike cycle of liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface, filling lakes and seas, and evaporating back into the sky (akin to Earth’s water cycle).
- Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water.

Ideal Place for Exploration :

Titan’s dense and calm atmosphere coupled with its low gravity makes flying an ideal way to travel to its different parts.
Titan is an ideal place to study the conditions necessary for habitability in an extraterrestrial environment.
- Even if we don’t find signs of life there, there is a chance we could observe the kind of chemical interactions that happened before life developed on Earth.