Following the success of Ingenuity, NASA will send a drone to one of the most exciting places in the solar system: Titan.

NASA has just confirmed a Dragonfly mission to Titan, the organic-rich moon of Saturn. This was the missing decision to finalize the ship’s design, begin its construction and testing before launching, scheduled for July 2028.

A legacy of ingenuity. Dragonfly has been in development for several years now. The mission was selected in 2019 and has since doubled its budget, putting it in jeopardy last year during a preliminary review of the otherwise compliant project.

However, the success of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which lasted 14 times longer than expected, prompted NASA to accept a $3.35 billion mission and an updated roadmap to reach Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, in 2034. .

The first atmospheric flight to the Moon. The eight-propeller Dragonfly helicopter, weighing 450 kg, will be launched on a heavy-duty rocket to shorten its flight path to Saturn.

After landing on Titan with a heat shield and two parachutes, the helicopter will fly over dozens of promising sites on the moon, looking for prebiotic chemical processes that were common on early Earth before life arose.

Development of Dragonfly is led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, but will involve multiple institutions, including space agencies CNES in France, DLR in Germany and JAXA in Japan.

Why is Titan interesting? Liquid seas exist only on the surface of two worlds in the solar system: Earth and Titan. Titan’s seas, discovered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft two decades ago, are made of methane, which remains in liquid form at temperatures of -180°C.

These light yellow oceans, up to 160 meters deep, are the largest hydrocarbon reserves within our reach. They form when nitrogen and methane react in Titan’s thick atmosphere to form organic molecules, which then fall to the surface as methane rain.

Could there be life in these oceans rich in organic matter? It is possible that Dragonfly will shed light on the search for prebiotic chemical processes.

Can Titan be colonized? The two closest destinations to Earth, the Moon and Mars, have very thin or no atmospheres and are shrouded in radiation. Titan, on the other hand, offers a dense atmosphere that protects its surface. But Saturn’s moon is not exactly a hospitable place.

The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe landed on Titan in 2005. He discovered that its atmosphere was composed primarily of nitrogen and hydrocarbons such as methane, ethane and propane, and that its atmospheric pressure was 1.5 times that of our planet at sea level.

Titan always faces the same side of Saturn due to tidal coupling, so one day lasts as long as its orbit around the planet: 15.9 Earth days. However, there is virtually no temperature difference between day and night because little light reaches Titan. Due to its great distance from the Sun and dense atmosphere, its surface receives 0.1% of the solar energy that the Earth receives.

In Hatak | Titan and the possibility of habitable life: Saturn’s largest moon remains the hope of scientists