The Dragonfly Mission to Titan: Exploration of an Ocean World

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Winston

Winston

Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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Probe descent and deployment starts at 9:26 - a large (450 kg / 990 lb) nuclear powered quadcopter taking advantage of the very dense atmosphere. Among many other instruments, LOTS of cameras. If it wins the mission competition, launch in 2025, land in 2034. Two year main surface mission, 100s of kilometers of travel.

 
Mission approved!

JUNE 28, 2019
NASA will fly a drone to Titan to search for life

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-nasa-drone-titan-life.html

For its next mission in our solar system, NASA plans to fly a nuclear powered drone copter to Saturn's largest moon Titan in search of the building blocks of life, the space agency said Thursday.

The Dragonfly mission, which will launch in 2026 and land in 2034, will send a rotorcraft to fly to dozens of locations across the icy moon, which has a substantial atmosphere and is viewed by scientists as an equivalent of very early-era Earth.

NASA chooses Saturn’s moon Titan as its next destination
Project Dragonfly will head to a familiar frontier
Jun 27, 2019

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/...ntiers-dragonfly-titan-saturn-moon-rotorcraft

“Dragonfly is a Mars rover-sized drone that will be able to fly from place to place on Titan,” Elizabeth “Zibi” Turtle, the lead investigator of the mission, said in a briefing. The 10-foot-long, and 10-foot-wide dual-quadcopter will look like a giant drone, with eight rotors helping it soar across the moon’s surface for about 8 or 9 miles (12-14 kilometers) in under an hour. It will make one of these “hops” about once every 16 days, scouting out future landing sites, spending a lot of time sampling the surface, and observing the weather. It will also be able to make shorter hops of just a few feet if the scientists spot something interesting near a landing site.

On Titan, it’s actually easier for a vehicle to fly than to roll in order to get to all the different places that the scientists would like to explore. Titan’s gravity is just a seventh of Earth’s and the atmosphere is four times thicker than our planet’s. That makes it perfect for flying. “If you put on wings, you’d be able to fly on Titan,” Turtle says.


 

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