This illustration shows NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft-lander approaching a site on Saturn’s exotic moon, Titan. Taking advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere and low gravity, Dragonfly will explore dozens of locations across the icy world, sampling and measuring the compositions of Titan’s organic surface materials to characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment and investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry.

NASA has announced plans to launch a drone mission to one of Saturn’s moons, Titan, in search of signs of life. The drone, named Dragonfly, will be a part of NASA’s New Frontiers program that is aimed at exploring the solar system. Dragonfly is scheduled to launch in 2027 and will arrive on Titan in 2036.

According to NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, the Dragonfly mission is “an extraordinary opportunity to explore a world that we know has the potential for life, and one that could give us insight into the origins of life in our own solar system and beyond.”

Dragonfly will be a rotorcraft drone, which means it will be able to fly and hover like a helicopter. It will be equipped with a range of scientific instruments to study Titan’s surface and atmosphere in detail. The drone will also take samples of Titan’s surface and analyze its composition to search for signs of life.

As per Elizabeth Turtle, principal investigator for the Dragonfly mission at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, “Titan is the only moon in our solar system with a thick atmosphere, and it is the only world besides Earth that has standing bodies of liquid on its surface. This combination of Earth-like features makes Titan an incredibly important target for exploration.”

Titan is believed to have the conditions that could support life, including liquid methane lakes and rivers, and a dense atmosphere similar to that of early Earth. Dragonfly’s exploration of Titan could provide valuable insights into the origins of life in our solar system and beyond.

The Dragonfly mission has been in the works for several years, and the team behind it has been developing the technology required to make the mission a success. With Dragonfly’s launch less than a decade away, NASA is taking a major step forward in the search for life beyond our planet.

Via The Impactlab