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
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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.
NASA has selected two finalists for the fourth New Frontiers mission: a spacecraft that would retrieve a sample from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and a drone that would explore multiple locations on Saturn's moon Titan:
In the first proposed mission, Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return, or Caesar, a spacecraft would go to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, previously explored by the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, and bring back a small chunk to Earth for closer study.
In the second mission, named Dragonfly, a robotic drone would be sent to Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which has a seas of hydrocarbons. The drone would be able to fly from one location to another and to perform detailed explorations of various terrains.
[...] Each team now will get $4 million and about one year to flesh out its idea. NASA will decide in mid-2019 which one of the two to build. The selected mission is to launch by the end of 2025.
The CAESAR mission to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko would scoop up 100 grams of material and return it to Earth... by 2038. CAESAR would be aided by Rosetta's precise measurements of the comet. The Dragonfly mission would make most of its observations on the ground of Titan, but would be able to fly hundreds of kilometers through Titan's atmosphere to land repeatedly. Flight on Titan is significantly easier than on Earth due to its 1.45 (Earth) atmospheres of pressure and 0.14g surface gravity.
The Enceladus Life Signatures and Habitability (ELSAH) and Venus In Situ Composition Investigations (VICI) concepts will also receive funding for technology development.
The previous New Frontiers missions were:
- The New Horizons flyby mission to Pluto, launched on January 19, 2006, which is currently en route to 2014 MU69.
- The Juno mission to Jupiter, launched on August 5, 2011. Perijove 10 (9th science flyby) was on December 16, and Perijove 11 will occur on February 7, 2018.
- The OSIRIS-REx mission, launched on September 8, 2016, which will arrive at the 0.5 km asteroid 101955 Bennu in August 2018 and return a sample to Earth by 2023.
Also at NASA, The Verge and Air & Space.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 28 2019, @02:44AM (5 children)
You think that's safe?
What if it's captured by the enemy?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 28 2019, @03:01AM (3 children)
Clash of the Titan
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28 2019, @06:42AM (2 children)
lets hope the electrical motors dont spark: flying a drone inside a half empty gasoline tanker ... should be fun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28 2019, @07:21AM (1 child)
Actually it's totally safe.
Your tanker contains a mixture of air (= 21% oxygen) and hydrocarbons. This is potentially very explosive, although in a far narrower range of mixtures than the movie industry has led you to believe.
Titan, on the other hand, contains _only_ hydrocarbons, as far as we can tell. No oxygen or other oxydizers around _at all_. So there is nothing for the hydrocarbons to burn with.
I would feel totally safe being on that drone. Well, concerning explosions, anyway ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28 2019, @12:57PM
i propose the first notable discovery on titan to be called ... "new texas"! ^_^
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Friday June 28 2019, @08:48AM
It's a standard RTG, they've been around since the 1950s.
It's 238Pu, which only Russia produces. The "enemy" already has more of it than we do. Also, it's not fissile, so useless for weapons.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday June 28 2019, @04:17AM (1 child)
To bad they can't use the waste heat from the RTG to heat the gas in a bladder. Be a lot simpler to build and program, plus the it would be more reliable mechanically since it would have less moving parts, but more susceptible to winds while on the ground.
Well, JPL and NASA have a long history of building good hardware so I'm going to trust they considered all the options and went with the best for the environment.
I probably won't live to see it, which kind of sucks. It sounds like a really cool (no pun intended) mission.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday June 28 2019, @05:39AM
That only works if you don't care where you go.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28 2019, @05:07AM (1 child)
https://what-if.xkcd.com/30/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 28 2019, @05:44PM
According to XKCD this plan will work on Titan. Has anyone let NASA know?