The Dragonfly mission is getting closer to reality. NASA has already signed an agreement with SpaceX to launch it with a Falcon Heavy rocket. It is expected to launch into space in 2028 and reach Saturn’s moon Titan as early as 2034.
Falcon Heavy rocket will launch Dragonfly
NASA has contracted SpaceX to launch the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. The cost of the launch will be about 256 million dollars. The Falcon Heavy launch vehicle will send the rotorcraft and landing module on its way to Titan in 2028, if all goes according to plan and the mission arrives at Titan in 2034. Dragonfly is an astrobiology mission designed to measure the presence of various chemicals on the cold moon.
Dragonfly will be the second spacecraft to visit Titan, following the Huygens probe and its brief visit in 2005.
Titan is notable because it is the only body other than Earth that has liquids on its surface. These fluids are hydrocarbons, not water, although there may be surface deposits of water ice from collisions or cryovolcanic eruptions. Researchers believe that prebiotic chemicals are also present on the moon, making it an attractive site to study how far prebiotic chemistry may have progressed.
Titan is favorable for engine-powered flight; its atmosphere is dense and its gravity is weak compared to Earth. Dragonfly is an octocopter, a large quadcopter with dual rotors that can take advantage of Titan’s favorable flying conditions. It will travel at about 36 km/h (22 mph) and will be powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), a type of engine proven in numerous missions. The vehicle is designed with redundancy; it could lose one of its motors or rotors, but will continue to function.
Dragonfly’s mission objectives
Dragonfly will land near a site on Titan called Shangri-La, just east of where the Huygens probe landed. Shangri-La is one of three large sand seas near the Moon’s equator.
Dragonfly’s target is a Selk impact structure near the edge of Shangri-La. Selk is a young impact crater about 90 kilometers (56 miles) in diameter that contains melt pools, places where liquid water and organics may have mixed together to form amino acids or other biomolecules. Dragonfly will first land on the dunes near the structure and then begin to explore the region and its chemical composition.
Features of Selk Crater
Selk is a dune crater, and in the article, the researchers note that dune craters are richer in organics than plains craters, and in fact are almost entirely composed of organics. However, Titan’s thick atmosphere makes observations difficult, and these conclusions follow from the interpretation of albedo and emissivity.
According to research, Selk and other dune craters may have originally had more water ice, but much of it has been eroded away. Nevertheless, the water ice has existed for a long period of time, and Dragonfly is heading to Selk to investigate the chemistry of the crater to try to determine if water and organics have interacted and if any progress has been made in prebiotic chemistry.
Dragonfly descent vehicle
Dragonfly will fly to Titan for six years, and as soon as it arrives in orbit, the launch capsule will separate from the cruiser module. With an aeroshell and two parachutes, the descent vehicle will withstand an approximately 105-minute descent. At about 1.2 km above the surface, the descent vehicle will deploy its skids and, relying on lidar and radar data, make an autonomous landing.
From the landing site, Dragonfly will turn around and make a series of flights up to 8 kilometers (5 miles) long. The region has varied geology, and during Titan’s nights, which last about 8 Earth days or about 192 hours, the spacecraft will take samples and then analyze them. Afterwards, it will make its way to Selk Crater.
Titan is an important astrobiology site in our Solar System, and unlike the frozen oceanic moons Europa and Enceladus, it doesn’t have the added difficulty of making its way through a thick layer of ice before its potentially biological environment can be explored.
Provided by phys.org
