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Dragonfly (Titan space probe)
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Dragonfly (Titan space probe)
Dragonfly is an upcoming NASA mission to send a robotic rotorcraft to the surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It is to be launched in July 2028 and planned to arrive in 2034. If it is successful, it will be the first aircraft on Titan and is intended to make the first powered and fully controlled atmospheric flight on any natural satellite, with the intention of studying prebiotic chemistry and extraterrestrial habitability. It will then use its vertical takeoffs and landings (VTOL) capability to move between exploration sites.
Titan is unique in having an abundant, complex, and diverse carbon-rich chemistry and a surface dominated by water ice, with an interior water ocean, making it a high-priority target for astrobiology and origin of life studies. The mission was proposed in April 2017 to NASA's New Frontiers program by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and was selected as one of two finalists (out of twelve proposals) in December 2017 to further refine the mission's concept. On 27 June 2019, Dragonfly was selected to become the fourth mission in the New Frontiers program. In April 2024 the mission was confirmed and moved to its final development stages.
Dragonfly is an astrobiology mission to Titan to assess its microbial habitability and study its prebiotic chemistry at various locations. Dragonfly is designed to perform controlled flights and vertical takeoffs and landings between locations. The mission is to involve flights to multiple different locations on the surface, which allows sampling of diverse regions and geological contexts.
Titan is a compelling astrobiology target because its surface contains abundant complex carbon-rich chemistry and because both liquid water (transient) and liquid hydrocarbons can occur on its surface, possibly forming a prebiotic primordial soup.
A successful flight of Dragonfly would make it the second rotorcraft to fly on a celestial body other than Earth, following the success of Ingenuity, a technology demonstration Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helicopter, that landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover on 18 February 2021 as part of the Mars 2020 mission and first achieved powered flight on 19 April 2021.
The initial Dragonfly conception took place over a dinner conversation between scientists Jason W. Barnes of Department of Physics, University of Idaho, (who had previously made the AVIATR proposal for a Titan aircraft) and Ralph Lorenz of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and it took 15 months to make it a detailed mission proposal. The principal investigator is Elizabeth Turtle, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
The Dragonfly mission builds on several earlier studies of Titan mobile aerial exploration, including the 2007 Titan Explorer Flagship study, which advocated a Montgolfier balloon for regional exploration, and AVIATR, an airplane concept considered for the Discovery program. The concept of a rotorcraft lander that flew on battery power, recharged during the eight-Earth-day Titan night from a radioisotope power source, was proposed by Lorenz in 2000. More recent discussion has included a 2014 Titan rotorcraft study by Larry Matthies, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that would have a small rotorcraft deployed from a lander or a balloon. The hot-air balloon concepts would have used the heat from a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG).
Dragonfly is to use its multi-rotor vehicle to transport its instrument suite to multiple locations to make measurements of surface composition, atmospheric conditions, and geologic processes.
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Dragonfly (Titan space probe)
Dragonfly is an upcoming NASA mission to send a robotic rotorcraft to the surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It is to be launched in July 2028 and planned to arrive in 2034. If it is successful, it will be the first aircraft on Titan and is intended to make the first powered and fully controlled atmospheric flight on any natural satellite, with the intention of studying prebiotic chemistry and extraterrestrial habitability. It will then use its vertical takeoffs and landings (VTOL) capability to move between exploration sites.
Titan is unique in having an abundant, complex, and diverse carbon-rich chemistry and a surface dominated by water ice, with an interior water ocean, making it a high-priority target for astrobiology and origin of life studies. The mission was proposed in April 2017 to NASA's New Frontiers program by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and was selected as one of two finalists (out of twelve proposals) in December 2017 to further refine the mission's concept. On 27 June 2019, Dragonfly was selected to become the fourth mission in the New Frontiers program. In April 2024 the mission was confirmed and moved to its final development stages.
Dragonfly is an astrobiology mission to Titan to assess its microbial habitability and study its prebiotic chemistry at various locations. Dragonfly is designed to perform controlled flights and vertical takeoffs and landings between locations. The mission is to involve flights to multiple different locations on the surface, which allows sampling of diverse regions and geological contexts.
Titan is a compelling astrobiology target because its surface contains abundant complex carbon-rich chemistry and because both liquid water (transient) and liquid hydrocarbons can occur on its surface, possibly forming a prebiotic primordial soup.
A successful flight of Dragonfly would make it the second rotorcraft to fly on a celestial body other than Earth, following the success of Ingenuity, a technology demonstration Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helicopter, that landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover on 18 February 2021 as part of the Mars 2020 mission and first achieved powered flight on 19 April 2021.
The initial Dragonfly conception took place over a dinner conversation between scientists Jason W. Barnes of Department of Physics, University of Idaho, (who had previously made the AVIATR proposal for a Titan aircraft) and Ralph Lorenz of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and it took 15 months to make it a detailed mission proposal. The principal investigator is Elizabeth Turtle, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
The Dragonfly mission builds on several earlier studies of Titan mobile aerial exploration, including the 2007 Titan Explorer Flagship study, which advocated a Montgolfier balloon for regional exploration, and AVIATR, an airplane concept considered for the Discovery program. The concept of a rotorcraft lander that flew on battery power, recharged during the eight-Earth-day Titan night from a radioisotope power source, was proposed by Lorenz in 2000. More recent discussion has included a 2014 Titan rotorcraft study by Larry Matthies, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that would have a small rotorcraft deployed from a lander or a balloon. The hot-air balloon concepts would have used the heat from a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG).
Dragonfly is to use its multi-rotor vehicle to transport its instrument suite to multiple locations to make measurements of surface composition, atmospheric conditions, and geologic processes.
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