NASA's Dragonfly: Flying a drone on Titan. (Pre-Mission)
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| 2023 Illustration of NASA's Dragonfly drone. Credit: NASA/John Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben |
*Earlier this September, Dragonfly was officially delayed by a year due to the budget problems mentioned in this article.
You can build your own Dragonfly drone out of LEGO here.
NASA announced its selection of the Dragonfly mission on June 27, 2019. The point of Dragonfly is to explore Titan's surface using a large octocopter drone. The concept of flying drones on other worlds was proven in 2021, with NASA's Ingenuity drone on Mars.
The Drone
Dragonfly will be the first spacecraft to visit Titan since Huygens landed there in 2005. It is planned to launch in 2027, and arrive in 2034, but it could be delayed due to NASA funding issues (currently however, it appears to be doing well). A few months ago, Dragonfly passed a major preliminary design review.
Flight mockups of Dragonfly have already undergone testing here on Earth, but production of mission hardware has yet to start. Flight for Dragonfly should be quite easy, even easier than flying here on Earth. Titan's thick nitrogen/methane atmosphere, as well as its low surface gravity, make it ideal for flight. In fact, a human could fly on titan if they strapped some wings to their arms (though you would by quite cold to say the least.)
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| Dragonfly team members working on a drone mockup. Credit: John Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman |
Titan's surface temperature is around -180 degrees Celsius. Dragonfly will have thick insulation around its vital components, and parts of the drone that stick out, like its propeller blades, will be specially designed for the cryogenic conditions. Dragonfly is planned to make hops that last for 30 minutes, and cover around 16 kilometres of distance. This will allow Dragonfly to explore a larger portion of Titan's surface than a ground based rover ever could.
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| 2019 Illustration of Dragonfly flying on Titan. Credit: NASA/John Hopkins APL |
Dragonfly will be attempting to study astrobiology, or the science of the possible conditions for life on other worlds. Titan is highly promising, and Dragonfly will have instruments for analyizing possible prebiotic chemistry on Titan's surface. Scientific instruments that will be used for the mission include:
DraMS: Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer, which will detect molecules important for life.
DraGNS: Dragonfly Gamma-ray and Neutron Spectrometer, a device for analyzing surface composition.
DraGMet: Dragonfly Geophysical and Meteorlogical sensor, for analyzing the weather and environment.
DragonCam: Dragonfly Camera's, for imaging science targets, and locating safe landing sites.
Since the Cassini mission no longer orbits Saturn, Dragonfly can't use it as a relay. This means that the drone will have to bring its own high gain antenna. The communication delay from Earth to Titan is around 70-90 minutes.
A day on Titan, called a "Tsol," is 15.95 Days. Titan is tidally locked with Saturn, so one side always faces the planet, while the other side is always facing away. Dragonfly is planned to have a 32 month long mission once on Titan, but it will likely operate until it succumbs to the environment.
The Target
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| Titan's Northern Hemisphere. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
- Date Discovered: 1655
- Radius: 2574.7 Kilometres
- Surface Pressure: 1.58 Atmospheres
- Atmospheric Composition: Nitrogen, Methane, Ethane, Ammonia, and Argon
- Mass: 1.34552523083241x10^23 Kilograms
- Density: 1.882 g/cm^3
- Rotational Period: 15.95 Days
- Orbital Period: 15.95 Days
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