With its dense and hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere, Titan has been a subject of interest for many decades. And with the success of the Cassini-Huygens mission, which began exploring Saturn and its system of moons back in 2004, there are many proposals on the table for follow-up missions that would explore the surface of Titan and its methane seas in greater depth.
The challenges that this presents have led to some rather novel ideas, ranging from balloons and landers to floating drones and submarines. But it is the proposal for a "Dragonfly" drone by researchers at NASA's JHUAPL that seems particularly adventurous. This eight-bladed drone would be capable of vertical-takeoff and landing (VTOL), enabling it to explore both the atmosphere and the surface of Titan in the coming decades.
The mission concept was proposed by a science team led by Elizabeth Turtle, a planetary scientist from NASA's Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL). Back in February, the concept was presented at the "Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop" – which took place at NASA's headquarters in Washington, DC – and again in late March at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.
One advantage of flying in a methane atmosphere is you don't have to cart a lot of heavy fuel with you.
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NASA's next big Mars rover will include a helicopter designed to work in Mars's thin atmosphere:
When NASA launches its next rover to Mars, the vehicle will have a small helicopter along for the ride. NASA announced today that it will be sending a small autonomous flying chopper — aptly named the Mars Helicopter — with the upcoming Mars 2020 rover. The helicopter will attempt to fly through the Martian air to see if vehicles can even levitate on Mars, where the atmosphere is 100 times thinner than that of Earth.
The design for the Mars Helicopter has been in the works for the last four years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but the space agency had yet to decide if it was actually going to send the vehicle to Mars. NASA needed to determine if this technology was actually feasible and if the agency had enough money in its budget to include the copter, according to Spaceflight Now. Now it seems that the agency has decided that this copter idea could actually work.
One much better place in the solar system for a flying vehicle is Titan, which has lower surface gravity and a denser atmosphere than Earth.
Related: Titan Ripe for Drone Invasion
NASA New Frontiers Finalists: Comet 67P Sample Return and a Titan Drone
NASA has selected the Dragonfly mission to Titan as the agency's fourth New Frontiers mission:
NASA has announced that our next destination in the solar system is the unique, richly organic world Titan. Advancing our search for the building blocks of life, the Dragonfly mission will fly multiple sorties to sample and examine sites around Saturn's icy moon.
Dragonfly will launch in 2026 and arrive in 2034. The rotorcraft will fly to dozens of promising locations on Titan looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and Earth. Dragonfly marks the first time NASA will fly a multi-rotor vehicle for science on another planet; it has eight rotors and flies like a large drone. It will take advantage of Titan's dense atmosphere – four times denser than Earth's – to become the first vehicle ever to fly its entire science payload to new places for repeatable and targeted access to surface materials.
Titan is an analog to the very early Earth, and can provide clues to how life may have arisen on our planet. During its 2.7-year baseline mission, Dragonfly will explore diverse environments from organic dunes to the floor of an impact crater where liquid water and complex organic materials key to life once existed together for possibly tens of thousands of years. Its instruments will study how far prebiotic chemistry may have progressed. They also will investigate the moon's atmospheric and surface properties and its subsurface ocean and liquid reservoirs. Additionally, instruments will search for chemical evidence of past or extant life.
Hopefully, some of us will live to see this epic mission reach Titan in 15 years.
Also at Spaceflight Now, New Scientist, NYT, and CNN.
Previously: Titan Ripe for Drone Invasion
NASA New Frontiers Finalists: Comet 67P Sample Return and a Titan Drone
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Sunday May 07 2017, @06:28AM (8 children)
But is there oxygen to burn it with?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @06:38AM (3 children)
Thank you for pointing that out in the first comment.
For P666:
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/699/why-does-titans-atmosphere-not-start-to-burn [stackexchange.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @07:34AM (2 children)
Wow! Everything you ever needed to know about Stack Exchange in one concise line:
Otherwise stated as, "Please answer in the form of a solution to my homework assignment."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday May 07 2017, @07:39AM (1 child)
Yeah, those annoying Jew nigger bastards. Bastard Klezmer-Kikes and nasty nignogs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @06:53PM
Are you okay? Do you need to talk about something?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:20AM (3 children)
The article submitter's last comment is scientifically uninformed. You need fuel AND a reactant. While a cute throwaway line, obviously you still need to carry approximately as much fuel exploring a methane environment as you would otherwise. Your "fuel" in this case might well be Oxygen. There is no pervasive free Oxygen present to burn the methane on Titan (as there would be on Earth: the roles of reactant and fuel just switch), just as there are no methane seas on Earth. There's a reason for that: if there HAD been, some lightning strike would have used up one or the other by now. Other than for the occasional undersea methane pocket on Earth, which are dynamically created and then dispersed, there would be no way to find both fuel and reactant. One could at best postulate a few rare oxygen pockets on Titan. Still, that's little help: imagine lighting a match on earth near escaping methane...sort of like a natural gas explosion that levels a house.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @03:23PM
—Imperial Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 08 2017, @12:26AM
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 08 2017, @12:49PM
Well, I am scientifically uninformed. That's why I'm always puzzled by how water always runs downhill and not the other way around...
Or, maybe it's a joke, Mr. Literal.
Washington DC delenda est.