Dragonfly: In Situ Exploration of Saturn's Moon Titan, an Organic Ocean World

Wednesday, May 26 at 8 pm ET, discover what we hope to learn about Saturn’s fascinating moon Titan, featuring planetary scientist Zibi Turtle. Register: s.si.edu/2Q58d9N
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is an ocean world with a dense atmosphere, abundant complex organic material on its icy surface, and a liquid-water ocean in its interior. The Cassini-Huygens mission revealed Titan to be surprisingly Earth-like, with active geological processes and opportunities for organic material to have mixed with liquid water on the surface in the past. These attributes make Titan a unique destination to seek answers to fundamental questions about what makes a planet or moon habitable and about the pre-biotic chemical processes that led to the development of life here on Earth.
NASA's upcoming Dragonfly New Frontiers mission is a rotorcraft lander designed to perform long-range in situ investigation of the chemistry and habitability of this fascinating extraterrestrial environment. In this program, Planetary scientist Zibi Turtle from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory will discuss this fascinating new mission: Taking advantage of Titan's dense atmosphere and low gravity, Dragonfly will fly from place to place, exploring diverse geological settings to measure the compositions of surface materials and observe Titan's geology and meteorology. Dragonfly will make multidisciplinary science measurements at dozens of sites, traveling ~100 miles during a 3-year mission to characterize Titan's habitability and to determine how far organic chemistry has progressed in environments that provide key ingredients for life.
The Exploring Space Lecture Series is made possible by the generous support of Aerojet Rocketdyne and United Launch Alliance.

[@rocbolt]

I remember reading about Dragonfly years ago while perusing mission proposal summaries on wikipedia (mostly just to giggle at the elaborate acronyms), and it sounded too awesome and ambitious to ever be picked. So hyped! And dang- I had no idea the copter was that huge, I love it :D

[@5Andysalive]

But kinda disappointing that they don't pretend "Dragonfly" is an acronym. I'm sure you could construct something if you want to...

[@novianovioTV]

Looked this up when I read that NASA has confirmed this project has passed its review and go ahead. Great. All systems go Zibi. Dragonflies are ectothermic which wouldn’t be much use on chilly Titan so thankfully we have that plutonium power pack

[@5Andysalive]

This maybe the coolest name a principle investigator ever had. Which fitting for possibly the coolest mission.

[@crazya3466]

Man I'd like to see some real good images of these planets and moons,you know pics we don't get to see..

[@rhoddryice5412]

Excellent presentation and QnA.

[@zapfanzapfan]

2:32 Start. Can't wait for those hydrogen measurements to see if maybe something is eating it. My only complaint is that it is so far away, landing in 13-ish years.

[@5Andysalive]

To whom do you complain about that?

[@lawrenceagee9843]

She’s smart.

[@gospelofthomas77thpearl22]

Amazing. Thank you.

[@_nebulousthoughts]

Will it be able to fly long distances? Will be be able to get to Kraken Mare?

[@ckdigitaltheqof6th210]

•Can this Dragonfly craft endure the extreme temperatures known in this location. •Is Dragonfly nuclear & solar powered, only solar or nuclear. •Will there be orbital spectator satellites to observe Dragonfly land and render within Titan atmosphere.

[@zapfanzapfan]

Temperature is very stable around 95 K or so, no wild temperature swings of 100 degrees every day-night cycle like on Mars. Power source is Plutonium 238, it slowly decays and produces heat which is converted to electricity by thermocouples. Same as the Voyagers which have been going for 44 years now. Solar radiation out there is less than 1% that on Earth, so, not very usable. Write your congressman to get congress to fund such a thing! Cassini orbited Saturn for 13 years, now we no longer have a robotic outpost there. We should definitely get a new one!

[@TechKidShazil]

Yes. Dragonfly will be tested for that temperature Its completely nuclear. The RTG(Nuclear power supplies) charge a battery while they are idle and the flight is performed with the power from batteries. No there wont be a titan orbiter accompanying Dragonfly

[@jinocas4395]

I have a question. If DF is warm then it will melt the rocky ice underneath the landing pads, that will cause the molten water surround the pads refreeze and trapped DF, right? I hope those legs are pretty good thermal insulators!!

[@ArtDocHound]

Must love hydrocarbons.