{"id":13118,"date":"2019-06-27T17:44:18","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T09:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-approves-development-of-flying-drone-to-explore-saturns-moon-titan\/"},"modified":"2019-06-27T17:44:18","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T09:44:18","slug":"nasa-approves-development-of-flying-drone-to-explore-saturns-moon-titan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-approves-development-of-flying-drone-to-explore-saturns-moon-titan\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA approves development of flying drone to explore Saturn\u2019s moon Titan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Artist\u2019s concept of the Dragonfly mission to Saturn\u2019s moon Titan. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA officials announced Thursday that the agency will move forward with the development of a plutonium-powered robotic quadcopter drone to explore Saturn\u2019s moon Titan, a hazy world covered with dunes and methane lakes that scientists say is reminiscent of the ancient Earth.<\/p>\n

The Dragonfly mission will launch in 2026 and reach Titan in 2034, descend through its thick atmosphere and deploy a rotorcraft to make multiple hops across the moon\u2019s alien surface over a 2.7-year mission, surveying dune fields and craters.<\/p>\n

\u201cTitan is a very Earth-like place, despite the fact that the materials are very different at this very low temperature, and the bedrock is water ice and the sand dunes are made of organic sand grains, and the liquid on the surface is liquid methane,\u201d said Elizabeth Turtle, principal investigator for the Dragonfly mission at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of what scientists know about Titan came from NASA\u2019s Cassini spacecraft and a European Space Agency probe named Huygens, which made the first landing on Saturn\u2019s largest moon in 2005.<\/p>\n

Cassini made 127 flybys of Titan in its 13-year tour of Saturn before its mission ended in September 2017, unveiling the moon\u2019s surface for the first time to see lakes of methane with rugged shorelines, streams and sand dunes. NASA\u2019s Voyager probes could not see through Titan\u2019s hazy veneer when they flew by Saturn in 1980 and 1981.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the great things about Dragonfly is with the cameras it has looking forward and downward, as Dragonfly is flying over the surface, it\u2019s going to be taking pictures and sending them back to Earth,\u201d said Curt Niebur, lead program scientist for NASA\u2019s line of New Frontiers missions. \u201cSo we will actually get the experience of flying along with Dragonfly, looking down at this alien, yet very familiar kind of surface that has these rivers and mountains.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s going to be a tremendous experience for the public, and I think everybody\u2019s really going to enjoy it,\u201d Niebur said.<\/p>\n

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The colorful globe of Saturn\u2019s largest moon, Titan, passes in front of the planet and its rings in this true color snapshot from NASA\u2019s Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/Space Science Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Titan\u2019s thick atmosphere makes getting down to the ground tricky, but once there, Titan\u2019s soupy atmosphere will make for an excellent flying environment, scientists said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlying on Titan is actually easier than flying on Earth,\u201d Turtle said. \u201cThe atmosphere is four times denser, at the surface, than the atmosphere at the surface of Earth, and (Titan\u2019s) gravity is about a seventh of the gravity here on Earth. So it\u2019s actually easier to fly on Titan. If you put on wings, you\u2019d be able to fly on Titan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cassini discovered weather systems on Titan, including rain storms and winds that appear to generate waves in the methane lakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get the rain coming down, collecting into really larger lakes, the size of Earth\u2019s Great Lakes, filled to great depth with all this liquid methane. and it really creates a kind of weather cycle, just like we have on Earth, just without the liquid water,\u201d Niebur said.<\/p>\n

But many questions about Titan remain unanswered. It\u2019s the solar system\u2019s only moon with a dense atmosphere \u2014 made primarily of nitrogen \u2014 but Titan\u2019s orange haze hides its surface from conventional cameras. Cassini peered through the atmosphere with an imaging radar to reveal huge land masses, oceans and other surface features.<\/p>\n

The temperature at Titan\u2019s surface hovers around minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 184 degrees Celsius), much too cold for liquid water at the surface. But there is evidence that Titan harbors an underground ocean of liquid water.<\/p>\n

The Dragonfly drone will carry cameras, drills, seismic and weather sensors, and spectrometers to examine the composition of Titan\u2019s rocks and soil, collecting four basic types of measurements. Vacuum-like suction devices on the craft\u2019s landing skids will suck up surface material for analysis in an on-board miniature oven, which will sense any organic compounds or biosignatures in the soil.<\/p>\n

A plutonium power source, known as a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG, will charge the craft\u2019s battery to power the instruments, eight electrically-driven rotors and a high-gain antenna to beam data directly to Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat really excites me about this mission is the fact that Titan has all of the key ingredients needed for life,\u201d said Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA\u2019s science mission directorate. \u201cLiquid water and liquid methane, we have complex organic carbon-based molecules, and we have the energy that we know is required for life.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we have, on Titan, an opportunity to observe the processes that were present on early Earth, when life began to form, and possibly even conditions that may harbor life today,\u201d Zurbuchen said. \u201cWe may be able to look for biosignatures there today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dragonfly\u2019s mobility will allow it to travel up to 110 miles (180 kilometers) across Titan over the course of 20 or more hops.<\/p>\n

About the size of a Mars rover, the flying drone will allow scientists to explore a wider range on Titan than a mission restricted to the surface. Dragonfly will first touch down in Titan\u2019s equatorial dune fields, then travel to a crater to investigate a region where remote sensing observations from Cassini suggest the presence of water ice outcrops.<\/p>\n

And unlike a rover on the surface, an instrumented drone will not be stopped or delayed by obstacles like rocks and steep slopes.<\/p>\n

NASA selected Dragonfly over a competing proposal named the Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return, or CAESAR, mission to become the fourth mission in the agency\u2019s New Frontiers program. CAESAR would have flown a spacecraft to Comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the same comet first explored by Europe\u2019s Rosetta mission, and collected a sample from its nucleus for return to Earth.<\/p>\n

The three previous New Frontiers missions developed by NASA are all currently operating in space.<\/p>\n

The New Horizons spacecraft launched in 2006 and conducted the first up-close flyby of Pluto in 2015, then continued farther into the outer solar system to encounter a 22-mile-long (35-kilometer) world in the Kuiper Belt named Ultima Thule on Jan. 1.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Juno orbiter launched in 2011 and arrived at Jupiter in 2016 to study the giant planet\u2019s atmosphere and magnetosphere, and the OSIRIX-Rex mission lifted off in 2016 and reached the asteroid Bennu late last year, where the spacecraft will retrieve a sample for return to Earth.<\/p>\n

Agency officials announced Dragonfly and CAESAR as finalists from an initial list of 12 mission proposals for the fourth New Frontiers mission in December 2017. NASA is committing up to $850 million to design and develop the Dragonfly mission, excluding launch and operations costs.<\/p>\n

When those expenses are fully accounted, the mission is expected to cost around $1 billion.<\/p>\n

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Artist\u2019s concept of the Dragonfly vehicle at Titan. Credit: NASA\/JHUAPL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDragonfly will be the first drone lander with the capability to fly over 100 miles through Titan\u2019s thick atmosphere,\u201d said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. \u201cTitan is unlike any other place in our solar system, and the most comparable to early Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis revolutionary mission would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago,\u201d Bridenstine said. \u201cA great nation does great things. We will launch Dragonfly to explore the frontiers of human knowledge for the benefit of all humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Dragonfly is a risky mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis mission is bold,\u201d Zurbuchen said. \u201cWe do these bold missions that change not only what we know, but how we think what\u2019s possible that we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dragonfly will be built and managed at APL, which oversaw the development of the New Horizons probe and NASA\u2019s Parker Solar Probe, which  launched last year and has already set a record for the closest spacecraft to the sun.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we got the proposal for this mission, the first proposal, the science was so compelling that we looked at all the risks that were there \u2014 and there were quite a number of them \u2014 and we just basically said we want to give them a chance,\u201d Zurbuchen said.<\/p>\n

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, NASA officials discussed several of the early risks they identified early with the Dragonfly concept, such as the potential for hydrocarbons to clog the probe\u2019s science instruments.<\/p>\n

\u201cTitan is rich in hydrocarbons,\u201d Niebur said. \u201cUsually, when we have a NASA mission, we are struggling to find trace amounts of these things, and Titan has so many that the concern was raised that that vacuum cleaner system that sucks up the sample and deliver it to the instrument could get clogged or contaminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dragonfly team redesigned the sample delivery system over the last year-and-a-half, during a preliminary \u201cPhase A\u201d study funded by NASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these risks, 10 risks or so, that were there were eliminated,\u201d Zurbuchen said. \u201cSo it\u2019s a team that has proven itself, a team that\u2019s highly diverse in all dimensions, and therefore innovative, and brought together by a strong principal investigator.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things about Dragonfly that is not necessarily apparent at first sight is that, while this is a new way of exploring a different planet, this is actually technology that is very mature on Earth,\u201d Turtle said. \u201cThere\u2019s so much technology development in terms of rotorcraft here on Earth, in terms of autonomous flight, and indeed a lot of the instrumentation that we will fly on Dragonfly is based on instrumentation that is sitting on the surface of Mars right now, that has flown in space before. So really what we\u2019re doing with Dragonfly is innovation not invention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turtle\u2019s team originally proposed launching Dragonfly in 2025, but NASA is giving the mission an extra year to prepare for launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt at NASA \u2026 that the team could benefit greatly by some additional time to work through some of the challenges,\u201d said Lori Glaze, head of NASA\u2019s planetary science division. \u201cThere was a very tight schedule, and we thought having a little extra time would help with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The original Dragonfly trajectory featured a flyby of Earth in 2026, one year after its launch in 2025, followed by further gravity assist flybys with Venus and Earth to slingshot toward Saturn, targeting a direct entry into Titan\u2019s atmosphere in 2034.<\/p>\n

With a launch in 2026, engineers have deleted the first Earth flyby from the trajectory, and Dragonfly will still reach Titan in 2034.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft will plunge into Titan\u2019s atmosphere for a two-hour descent, using friction and a parachute to slow down before the rotorcraft releases from its aeroshell and flies itself to the surface, landing directly on its skids.<\/p>\n

Dragonfly\u2019s exploration will be limited to the equatorial regions of Titan, away from its methane oceans. The northern hemisphere, where Titan\u2019s largest seas are located, will be in winter when the spacecraft arrives, with the sun and Earth below the horizon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big question that remains about the materials on the surface of Titan is the composition of the solid materials,\u201d Turtle said.<\/p>\n

The Cassini spacecraft\u2019s radar was able to resolve Titan\u2019s methane seas and identify their chemical composition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big outstanding question is what the nature of these solid surface materials are, and that\u2019s where the keys to understanding the prebiotic chemistry that is so abundant on Titan lies, in the solid surface materials,\u201d Turtle said.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s concept of the Dragonfly mission to Saturn\u2019s moon Titan. Credit: NASA NASA officials announced Thursday that the agency will move forward with the development of a plutonium-powered robotic quadcopter drone to explore Saturn\u2019s moon Titan, a hazy world covered with dunes and methane lakes that scientists say is reminiscent of the ancient Earth. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1874,1404,1861,190,2020,1561,1562,1563],"class_list":["post-13118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astrobiology","tag-dragonfly","tag-jhuapl","tag-nasa","tag-new-frontiers","tag-planetary-science","tag-saturn","tag-solar-system"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}