Dragonfly is Going to Titan on a Falcon Heavy

NASA has given SpaceX the contract to launch the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. A Falcon Heavy will ship the rotorcraft and its lander on their option to Titan in 2028, if all goes in response to plan, and the mission will arrive at Titan in 2034. Dragonfly is an astrobiology mission designed to measure the presence of various chemical compounds on the frigid moon.

Dragonfly would be the second craft to go to Titan, together with the Huygens probe and its quick go to again in 2005.

Titan is exceptional as a result of it’s the one physique moreover Earth with liquids on its floor. The liquids are hydrocarbons, not water, although there could also be floor deposits of water ice from impacts or cryovolcanic eruptions. Researchers suppose that prebiotic chemical compounds are additionally current, making the moon an attractive goal to know how far prebiotic chemistry might have superior.

Titan is benign in relation to powered flight; its environment is dense and its gravity is weak, in comparison with Earth. Dragonfly is an octocopter, a big quadcopter with double rotors, that may make the most of Titan’s flight-friendly circumstances. It will journey at about 36 kmh (22 mph) and shall be powered by a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), a sort of engine confirmed in a number of missions. The craft is designed to be redundant; it will possibly lose certainly one of its motors or rotors and nonetheless operate.

Dragonfly will land close to a characteristic on Titan known as Shangri-La, east of the place the Huygens probe landed. Shangri-La is certainly one of three massive sand seas close to the moon’s equator.

Dragonfly’s goal is the Selk influence construction, close to the sting of Shangri-La. Selk is a younger influence crater about 90 km (56 mi) in diameter that options soften swimming pools, websites the place liquid water and organics may combine collectively to kind amino acids or different biomolecules. Dragonfly will initially land at some dunes close to the construction then start exploring the area and its chemistry.

Thanks largely to Cassini and Huygens, researchers have made progress understanding Titan. In a 2020 paper, researchers examined two varieties of craters on the moon: dune craters and plains craters. Selk is a dune crater, and within the paper, researchers stated that the dune craters are richer in organics than plains craters, and actually are virtually fully composed of organics. However, Titan’s thick environment makes it tough to watch, and these findings stem from deciphering albedo and emissivity.

Selk and the opposite dune craters might have initially had extra water ice, in response to the analysis, however a lot of it’s been eroded away. However, there was an extended time frame the place the water ice was current, and Dragonfly is heading for Selk to look at the chemistry within the crater and to attempt to decide if water and organics interacted and if prebiotic chemistry made any headway.

It’s as much as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to ship Dragonfly on its option to Titan. Falcon Heavy has 11 launches beneath its belt, together with the launch of the Europa Clipper in October. After Falcon Heavy launches Dragonfly, the spacecraft will carry out one flyby of Earth to achieve further velocity.

It’ll take six years for Dragonfly to succeed in Titan, and simply because it arrives, the entry capsule will separate from the cruise module. With the assistance of an aeroshell and two chutes, the lander will endure an roughly 105-minute descent. At roughly 1.2 km above the floor, the lander will deploy its skids, and primarily based on its lidar and radar knowledge, will carry out and autonomous touchdown.

From its touchdown website, Dragonfly will deploy itself and carry out a collection of flights as much as 8km (5 mi) lengthy. There’s numerous geology within the area, and the rotorcraft will purchase samples after which analyze them throughout Titan’s nights, which final about 8 Earth days or about 192 hours. After that, it should head to the Selk crater.

Titan is a crucial astrobiology goal in our Solar System, and in contrast to the frozen ocean moons Europa and Enceladus, there’s no added complexity of by some means working its approach by means of thick ice earlier than its doubtlessly organic setting may be examined.

But for all of this to succeed, it wants a profitable launch first. NASA is paying SpaceX about $256 million to launch Dragonfly, and it the launch goes off with out a hitch, it’ll be cash well-spent.