Dragonfly (probe)

Dragonfly (probe)
Mission concept
Mission goal	titanium
Client	NASA
Instruments
DraMS, DraGNS, DraGMet, DragonCam
Course of the mission
Start date	April 2026
End date	after 2036

Dragonfly ( English for dragonfly ) is a planned space mission of NASA to Saturn's moon Titan . This is the fourth mission under the New Frontiers program . Dragonfly is scheduled to take off in April 2026 and land on Titan in the Shangri-La region in late 2034 .

concept

The idea is a quadrocopter that lands on the surface of Titan, moves there in flight and can thus explore several places on the moon within one to two years, possibly also the shore of a methane lake , of which there are a few on Titan.

Artist's impression of Titans

Research goals

Above all, chemical and astrobiological research should be in the foreground. For example, we want to find out whether Titan's lakes harbor precursors of life.

selection

Originally, twelve mission proposals had been submitted, including a lander that will survive longer on Venus , a probe for Saturn's moon Enceladus and an atmosphere probe for Saturn . NASA selected Dragonfly and Caesar , a sample return mission to Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko , as finalists. The decision for Dragonfly was made in June 2019.

Web links

Commons : Dragonfly (probe)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Project website of the Johns Hopkins University (English)
• Evan Ackerman: How to Conquer Titan With a Nuclear Quad Octocopter . IEEE Spectrum, January 8, 2018 (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ NASA - Assessments of Major Projects . Government Accountability Office , April 2020.
2. ↑ FY 2021 President's Budget Request Summary. (PDF; 12.1 MB) NASA , p. 449 , accessed on February 24, 2020 (English). 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Andrea Witze: NASA drone will soar over Saturn's largest moon. In: Nature. June 27, 2019, accessed June 27, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Eyes on Titan: Dragonfly Team Shapes Science Instrument Payload. In: dragonfly.jhuapl.edu. Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University , January 9, 2019, accessed September 30, 2019 .