The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has given the green light to explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan's nuclear-powered Dragonfly rotorcraft. The 2028 interstellar mission was approved after years of delays due to COVID-19 and a series of cost overruns.
Located about 746 million miles (1.2 billion kilometers) from Earth, Titan is one of the most difficult objects in the solar system to explore, but it's such a peculiar object that attracts scientific explorers, albeit at a high cost to travel there. Titan is not only Saturn's largest moon, but also the second largest moon in the solar system. It is also the only of the two satellites to have a large atmosphere. Not just the atmosphere, but an atmosphere that is denser than the Earth's atmosphere.
In addition to this, Titan is also an organic chemist's dream. Titan's atmosphere is mostly made up of nitrogen, but there is also a large amount of methane. Methane was much more than the current ~2.7%, but much of it has been converted by the sun into complex hydrocarbons, forming clouds and raining down on the surface, forming lakes of methane, ethane and other compounds. The interior of the Moon may even hide an ocean of water.
The question is, how to explore such a place. A simple lander has entered Titan's atmosphere, but a more ambitious mission needs to be mobile. On the Moon or Mars, it's as simple (relatively speaking) as a wheeled rover that can be towed from one place to another, but Titan is more like a swamp made up of oil byproducts.
This means taking a different approach. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently concluded the Ingenuity Mars helicopter mission, which was supposed to last a month but lasted about three years.
While exploring Titan's landscapes and swampy coasts, Dragonfly is able to jump from one place to another, powered by radiant heat generators, flying on aluminum/titanium rotors for the purpose of not only conducting general geological surveys, but also studying Titan's organic chemistry and searching for biological features, although Titan is generally not considered an ideal candidate for extraterrestrial life. Although Titan is not generally considered a good candidate for extraterrestrial life, it is seen more as an example of what scientists believe is the primordial soup that produced life on Earth.
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During the mission, Dragonfly will fly from one site to another and study the chemistry of the area using its sensors, including a radiation backscatter system and a mass spectrometer. It will also record local weather and seismic conditions to further understand Titan's internal structure.
Due to numerous budget debates, the delay in the Dragonfly launch will mean that the mission will require a larger, more powerful rocket to ensure it can land on Titan by the stated 2034 year.
"Dragonfly is a high-profile scientific mission that has received a lot of attention from all walks of life, and we are excited to take the next step in this mission," said Nicky Fox, deputy director of the Science Mission Agency at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.. Exploring Titan will push the limits of what we can do with gyroplanes beyond Earth."