Washington. A car-sized nuclear-powered drone called Dragonfly It will be NASA’s only mission to the surface of another ocean world, Saturn’s large moon Titan.
The US space agency announced that it is expected to launch the ship in July 2028 and plans for it to fly over and touch the organic-rich sands of Titan.
The rover, to be built and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), will be equipped with cameras and sensors to examine areas of Titan known to contain organic materials, which may have once mixed with ancient liquid and now frozen water. on the surface.
Dragonfly It was already tested in the California deserts similar to the dunes of Titan, in order to examine the flight systems in the wind tunnels of the NASA Langley Research Center.
Additionally, a large-scale instrumented lander model has been run using atmospheric pressure and temperature simulations in APL’s new Titan Chamber.
Surface samples
The drone has eight rotors and will take advantage of the dense atmosphere of that moon – four times larger than the Earth’s satellite – to be the first vehicle to fly with its entire scientific payload to new places in order to access the materials of the surface, NASA said.
Estimates predict it will first arrive in the equatorial Shangri-La dune fields, similar to the linear dunes of Namibia in southern Africa, and offer a diverse sampling location.
If the landing occurs without setbacks, it will explore this region on short and longer flights, up to 8 kilometers, stopping to take samples.
Finally, you will reach the Selk impact crater, where there are indications of the existence of liquid water, organic matter (complex molecules containing carbon, combined with hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen) and energy, which together constitute the recipe for life
he indicated.