NASA has launched its “Journey to Titan” campaign. Anyone can add their name to the passenger list for the Dragonfly mission, and it will travel to Saturn’s largest moon on a microchip mounted aboard the rotorcraft. Submissions are open until January 15, 2027.
How to Get on Board
To sign up, simply complete a short form at go.nasa.gov/dragonfly-names. After registering, participants will receive a personalized digital boarding pass as a keepsake of their involvement in the mission. The deadline is 11:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time on January 15, which corresponds to 6:59 a.m. on January 16 in Kyiv.
This is not the first time the agency has invited people to take part symbolically in interplanetary journeys. Millions of names are stored on microchips aboard the Perseverance rover and the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which is currently heading toward Jupiter. Dragonfly could become the most distant destination ever reached by such “passengers” on a mission intended to land.
NASA Science Mission Directorate head Nicky Fox promised that Dragonfly would “capture the imagination.” She said the agency is sending a scientific rotorcraft to explore the surface of another world for the first time, and that Titan is the most Earth-like of all known worlds. Fox invited everyone to join the journey, even if only by name.
Flying Over Methane Lakes
Dragonfly is currently being assembled at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Launch aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled for 2028, with arrival at Titan in 2034. There, the spacecraft will encounter a dense atmosphere, rivers and lakes of liquid methane, vast dune fields, and a surface rich in organic compounds.
The rotorcraft will fly between different locations on the moon, searching for signs of prebiotic chemistry—the reactions that preceded the emergence of biology. Data from Titan should help reveal which ingredients and conditions are needed for life to arise.
APL manages the mission for NASA, and Elizabeth Turtle is its principal investigator. Dragonfly is the fourth mission in the New Frontiers program, overseen by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. If all goes according to plan, it will become humanity’s second visitor to Titan’s surface, following the European Huygens probe, which landed in 2005.
Previously, we reported that the Dragonfly drone will fly on Titan powered by a nuclear battery.
