NASA considering landing a drone on Saturn's Moon Titan

[editor]

This sounds fantastic.

he spacecraft that have peered through the yellowish haze surrounding Saturn's moon Titan discovered a strange, yet strangely familiar world where life could theoretically take root. Now, scientists want to return — this time buoyed by Earth's fascination with drone technology.

That's precisely what a team of scientists working on a proposed mission called Dragonfly want to do: combine terrestrial drone technology and instruments honed by Mars exploration to investigate the complex chemical reactions taking place on Saturn's largest moon. Later this year, NASA will need to decide between that mission and another finalist proposal, which would collect a sample from a comet.

Dragonfly, if chosen, would aim to launch in 2025 and arrive at Titan in 2034. The world it will explore is oddly reminiscent of Earth for a strange moon so far away. On Earth, sunlight powers organic life growing in fields and forests; the same sunlight triggers chemical reactions in Titan's upper atmosphere that create large organic molecules that pour down on the moon's surface, like Earth's rainwater. While Earth has a landscape made of rock covered in places by water, Titan's landscape is made of water ice covered in places by organic compounds.

NASA May Decide This Year to Land a Drone on Saturn's Moon Titan

 

[fishfinger]

"Flights from Titan airport are suspended while authorities search for unauthorised drones".

 

[alsoknownas]

It doesn't quite look like something NASA would make though. Looks like something someone's knocked up out of kitchen assembly parts or something. Budget cuts perhaps?

 

[editor]

It doesn't quite look like something NASA would make though. Looks like something someone's knocked up out of kitchen assembly parts or something. Budget cuts perhaps?

Have a read of this:

The lander-size instrument, known as Dragonfly, would take advantage of Titan's low gravity and thick atmosphere to visit multiple sites over several years, moving from one promising site to the next and recharging between the brief flights.

"It's such a rich place to be able to explore in situ, and then it hands us the way to explore it," the project's principal investigator, Elizabeth Turtle, told Space.com. Turtle, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Research Laboratory in Maryland, is leading the team that's proposing an in-depth exploration of Titan as part of NASA's New Frontiers mission program, which generally funds midsize missions to explore the solar system. She presented the Dragonfly concept last month at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. [Amazing Photos of Titan: Saturn's Biggest Moon]

In the past, Titan mission proposals have included balloons and airships that took advantage of the thick atmosphere to travel. But these missions required these vehicles to be constantly in the air, which consumed a great deal of power, Turtle said. They also provided only cursory exploration of the surface.

Instead, Dragonfly would use two rotors positioned at each of its four corners to fly from one region of the moon to the next, then recharge while landed using the multimission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) it would carry with it, which converts the heat from decaying plutonium-238 into electricity. This could mean Dragonfly could fly around Titan for years, or even decades, Turtle said. At the same time, the thick atmosphere would block damaging radiation, providing a welcoming environment for a long-lived mission, she added.

'Dragonfly' Drone Could Explore Saturn Moon Titan

 

[alsoknownas]

Mate, I've made loads of spaceships out of lego and all-sorts. No chance that thing is getting to Titan. Looks all sorts of wrong.

eta: not liquorice all-sorts

 

[SpookyFrank]

The thick atmosphere/low gravity thing should make landings a lot more straightforward than on mars.

Has anything ever been landed on a moon besides Earth's before?

 

[a_chap]

Has anything ever been landed on a moon besides Earth's before?

Yes. On Titan.

 

[HAL9000]

Have a read of this:

'Dragonfly' Drone Could Explore Saturn Moon Titan

Radioactive Drone, cool