NASA has received approval to launch a drone-like lander to explore Titan, the largest of Saturn’s 146 moons.
The agency announced Tuesday that it is targeting a launch in July 2028 and is now finalizing the design of Dragonfly, a Mars rover-sized rotary-wing vehicle that will be used to detect “Titan before life formed.” and common prebiotic chemical processes on early Earth”. “
If all goes according to plan, the octocopter is expected to arrive on Titan in 2034, where it will fly to dozens of “promising sites” to characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment, and search for any signs that life once existed on Titan. The moon is rich in organic matter. Titan’s denser atmosphere (about four times that of Earth) will help the rotorcraft make a “hop” of up to 5 miles per Titan day (16 Earth days).
Dragonfly is expected to travel more than 108 miles over the course of its 32-month mission—further than all NASA’s Mars and cislunar rovers combined. NASA estimates the total lifecycle cost of the rotorcraft at $3.35 billion, roughly double the spending forecast when the program was announced in 2019.
“Dragonfly is a compelling science mission that has generated widespread community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps in this mission,” Nikki Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, said in a NASA press release Zhong said. “Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with gyroplanes beyond Earth.”