 Artist's impression of theDragonfly spacecraft flying over the surface of Titan | |||||||||||
| Names | New Frontiers 4 | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mission type | Titan rotorcraft | ||||||||||
| Operator | NASA /APL | ||||||||||
| Website | dragonfly | ||||||||||
| Mission duration | Planned: 10 years[1] Science phase: 3.3 years[2] | ||||||||||
| Spacecraft properties | |||||||||||
| Spacecraft type | Rotorcraft lander | ||||||||||
| Manufacturer | Applied Physics Laboratory | ||||||||||
| Landing mass | ≈450 kg (990 lb)[3] | ||||||||||
| Power | 70 watts (desired)[3] from anMMRTG | ||||||||||
| Start of mission | |||||||||||
| Launch date | 5–25 July 2028 (planned)[4] | ||||||||||
| Rocket | Falcon Heavy[4] | ||||||||||
| Launch site | Kennedy,LC-39A | ||||||||||
| Contractor | SpaceX | ||||||||||
| Titan aircraft | |||||||||||
| Landing date | 2034[2] | ||||||||||
| Landing site | Shangri-La dune fields[5] | ||||||||||
| Distance flown | 8 km (5.0 mi) per flight (planned)[5] | ||||||||||
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 Dragonfly Mission Insignia (New Frontiers 5) → | |||||||||||
Dragonfly is an upcomingNASA mission to send a roboticrotorcraft to the surface ofTitan, the largest moon ofSaturn. It is to be launched in July 2028 and planned to arrive in 2034. If it is successful, it will be the first aircraft on Titan and is intended to make the first powered and fully controlled atmospheric flight on anynatural satellite, with the intention of studying prebiotic chemistry andextraterrestrial habitability. It will then use its vertical takeoffs and landings (VTOL) capability to move between exploration sites.[7][8][9]
Titan is unique in having an abundant, complex, and diverse carbon-rich chemistry and a surface dominated by water ice, with an interior water ocean, making it a high-priority target forastrobiology andorigin of life studies.[7] The mission was proposed in April 2017 to NASA'sNew Frontiers program by theJohns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and was selected as one of two finalists (out of twelve proposals) in December 2017 to further refine the mission's concept.[10][11] On 27 June 2019,Dragonfly was selected to become the fourth mission in the New Frontiers program.[12][13] In April 2024 the mission was confirmed and moved to its final development stages.[14]
Dragonfly is an astrobiology mission to Titan to assess its microbial habitability and study its prebiotic chemistry at various locations.Dragonfly is designed to perform controlled flights and vertical takeoffs and landings between locations. The mission is to involve flights to multiple different locations on the surface, which allows sampling of diverse regions and geological contexts.[3][15]
Titan is a compelling astrobiology target because its surface contains abundant complex carbon-rich chemistry and because both liquid water (transient) and liquid hydrocarbons can occur on its surface, possibly forming a prebioticprimordial soup.[16]
A successful flight ofDragonfly would make it the second rotorcraft to fly on a celestial body other than Earth, following the success ofIngenuity, a technology demonstrationUnmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helicopter, that landed on Mars with thePerseverance rover on 18 February 2021 as part of theMars 2020 mission and first achieved powered flight on 19 April 2021.[17][18][19]
The initialDragonfly conception took place over a dinner conversation between scientists Jason W. Barnes of Department of Physics,University of Idaho, (who had previously made theAVIATR proposal for a Titan aircraft) andRalph Lorenz ofJohns Hopkins UniversityApplied Physics Laboratory, and it took 15 months to make it a detailed mission proposal.[3] The principal investigator isElizabeth Turtle, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.[15]
TheDragonfly mission builds on several earlier studies of Titan mobile aerial exploration, including the 2007 Titan Explorer Flagship study,[20] which advocated aMontgolfier balloon for regional exploration, and AVIATR, an airplane concept considered for the Discovery program.[3] The concept of a rotorcraft lander that flew on battery power, recharged during the eight-Earth-day Titan night from a radioisotope power source, was proposed by Lorenz in 2000.[21] More recent discussion has included a 2014 Titan rotorcraft study by Larry Matthies, at theJet Propulsion Laboratory, that would have a small rotorcraft deployed from a lander or a balloon.[22] The hot-air balloon concepts would have used the heat from aradioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG).[23]
Dragonfly is to use its multi-rotor vehicle to transport its instrument suite to multiple locations to make measurements of surface composition, atmospheric conditions, and geologic processes.[24]
Dragonfly andCAESAR, a comet sample return mission to67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, were the two finalists for the New Frontiers program Mission 4,[25][26] and on 27 June 2019, NASA selectedDragonfly for development with a plan to launch in June 2027.[27][28]
On 3 March 2023, Dragonfly passed its preliminary design review (PDR).[29] In November 2023 followingNASA's decision to postpone the formal confirmation of the mission due to funding uncertainties, the launch was delayed by one year, with a new launch date set for July 2028.[30] On 25 November 2024,NASA announced the launch service award for the Dragonfly mission. Dragonfly will launch on aSpaceXFalcon Heavy with a targeted launch period from 5 July 2028, to 25 July 2028.
On April 25, 2025, Dragonfly passed its critical design review phase which marks the beginning of the full-scale physical construction and testing of the probe.[31]
During the2025 federal government shutdown, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center began closing multiple buildings and consolidating equipment, which the agency describes as a pre-planned “strategic consolidation” not expected to impact missions.[32] A NASA spokesperson told CNN that work on theNancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Dragonfly mission would continue during the shutdown as excepted operations.[32]
According to Space.com, some employees at the center expressed concern that the manner and timing of the closures could disrupt work on those projects,[33] and CNN reported that an internal document compiled by Goddard staff cited potential impacts on specialized testing laboratories.[32]
TheCAESAR andDragonfly missions received US$4 million funding each through the end of 2018 to further develop and mature their concepts.[25] NASA announced the selection ofDragonfly on 27 June 2019, which is expected to be built and launched by July 2028.[30]Dragonfly is the fourth in NASA's New Frontiers portfolio, a series of principal investigator-led planetary science investigations that fall under a development cost cap of approximately US$850 million, and including launch services, the total cost projection is approximately US$1 billion.[34] A revised cost projection was released in April 2024, withDragonfly now expected to incur a total lifecycle cost of US$3.35 billion due to supply chain increases and delays caused by theCOVID-19 pandemic.[14]
Titan is similar to the very early Earth and can provide clues to how life may have arisen onEarth. In 2005, theEuropean Space Agency'sHuygens lander acquired some atmospheric and surface measurements on Titan, detectingtholins,[35] which are a mix of various types of hydrocarbons (organic compounds) in the atmosphere and on the surface.[36][37] Because Titan's atmosphere obscures the surface at many wavelengths, the specific compositions of solid hydrocarbon materials on Titan's surface remain essentially unknown.[38] Measuring the compositions of materials in different geologic settings is intended to reveal how far prebiotic chemistry has progressed in environments that provide known keyingredients for life, such aspyrimidines (bases used to encode information inDNA) andamino acids, the building blocks ofproteins.[39]
Areas of particular interest are sites whereextraterrestrial liquid water in impact melt or potentialcryovolcanic flows may have interacted with the abundant organic compounds.Dragonfly would provide the capability to explore diverse locations to characterize the habitability of Titan's environment, investigate how farprebiotic chemistry has progressed, and search forbiosignatures indicative of life based on water as solvent and evenhypothetical types of biochemistry.[7]
The atmosphere contains plentifulnitrogen andmethane, and strong evidence indicates thatliquid methane exists on the surface. Evidence also indicates the presence of liquid water andammonia under the surface, which may be delivered to the surface bycryovolcanic activity.[40]
Dragonfly is designed as arotorcraft lander, much like a largequadcopter with double rotors, which is known as an octocopter.[3] The rotor configuration provides redundancy to enable the mission to tolerate the loss of at least one rotor or motor.[3] Each of the craft's eight rotors is 1.35 m (4.4 ft) in diameter.[41][42] The aircraft would travel at about 10 m/s (36 km/h; 22 mph) and climb to an altitude of up to 4 km (13,000 ft).[3]
TheRadioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) power source has been proven in multiple spacecraft, and the extensive use of quad drones on Earth provides a well-understood flight system that is being complemented with algorithms to enable independent actions in real-time.[43] The craft is designed to operate in aspace radiation environment and in temperatures averaging 94 K (−179.2 °C).[43]
Flight on Titan is aerodynamically benign. Titan's low gravity and its dense atmosphere's paucity of wind permits unimpeded and efficient rotor propulsion.[43] The power needed to achieve flight for a given mass is about 40 times lower than that required on Earth.[3] The atmosphere possesses 1.45 times the pressure and about four times the density of Earth's, and when combined with a local gravity only 13.8% of Earth's, flight becomes an order of magnitude easier to sustain. Despite these advantages Titan's cold temperatures, lower light levels and higher atmospheric drag on the airframe will all present challenges.[23]
Dragonfly should be able to fly several kilometers,[44] powered by alithium-ion battery, which is to be recharged by aMulti-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) during the night.[21] MMRTGs convert the heat from thenatural decay of aradioisotope into electricity.[3] Twenty-fourRadioisotope Heater Units (RHUs) are also kept reserved for this mission.[45] The rotorcraft should be able to travel ten miles (16 km) on each battery charge and stay aloft for a half hour each time.[46] The vehicle is to have sensors to scout new science targets, and then return to the original site until new landing destinations are approved by mission controllers.[46][47]
TheDragonfly rotorcraft will weigh approximately 450 kg (990 lb) and be packaged inside a heatshield of 3.7 m (12 ft) diameter.[3]Regolith samples are to be obtained by two sample acquisition drills and hoses, one on each landing skid, for delivery to themass spectrometer instrument.[3]
The craft is to remain on the ground during the Titan nights, which last about eight Earth days or 192 hours.[3] Activities during the night may include sample collection and analysis,seismological studies like diagnosing wave activity on the northern hydrocarbon seas,[48]meteorological monitoring, and local microscopic imaging usingLED illuminators as flown onPhoenix lander andCuriosity rover.[3][49] The craft is designed to communicate directly to Earth with ahigh-gain antenna.[3]
ThePenn State Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence is responsible for rotor design and analysis, rotorcraft flight-control development, scaled rotorcraft testbed development, ground testing support, and flight performance assessment.[50]
Dragonfly is expected to launch in July 2028[51] onFalcon Heavy[4] and to take six years to reach Titan, arriving by 2034. The spacecraft will perform agravity assist flyby of Earth to gain additional velocity on its way to Titan.[52] The spacecraft would be the first dedicated outerSolar System mission not to visit Jupiter, as this traditional means of gravity assisted flyby will not be usefully close to the anticipated flight path to Saturn.[53]
The cruise stage is to separate from the entry capsule ten minutes before encountering Titan's atmosphere.[46] The lander would then descend to the surface of Titan using anaeroshell and a series of twoparachutes, while the spent cruise stage would burn up in uncontrolledatmospheric entry. The duration of the descent phase is expected to be 105 minutes.[54] The aeroshell is derived from theGenesis sample return capsule and the PICA heat shield is similar toMSL andMars 2020 design and should protect the spacecraft for the first six minutes of its descent.[54]
At a speed of Mach 1.5, adrogue parachute is to deploy, to slow the capsule to subsonic speeds. Due to Titan's comparatively thick atmosphere and low gravity, the drogue chute phase should last for 80 minutes.[54] A larger main parachute is to replace the drogue chute when the descent speed is sufficiently low. During the 20 minutes on the main chute, the lander is to be prepared for separation. The heat shield is to be jettisoned, the landing skids are to be extended, and sensors such asradar andlidar are to be activated.[54] At an altitude of 1.2 km (0.75 mi), the lander should be released from its parachute for a powered flight to the surface. The specific landing site and flight operation are to be performed autonomously. This is required since thehigh gain antenna would not be deployed during descent, and because communication between Earth and Titan takes70–90 minutes in each direction.[46]
TheDragonfly rotorcraft should land initially indunes to the southeast of the Selk impact structure at the edge of the dark region calledShangri-La.[56][5] It is planned to explore this region in a series of flights of up to 8 km (5.0 mi) each and acquire samples from compelling areas with a diverse geography. After landing, it is planned to travel to the Selk impact crater, where in addition totholinorganic compounds, there is evidence of past liquid water.[5]
TheSelk crater is a geologically youngimpact crater 90 km (56 mi) in diameter, located about 800 km (500 mi) north-northwest of theHuygens lander.[57] (7°00′N199°00′W / 7.0°N 199.0°W /7.0; -199.0)[58][55]Infrared measurements and other spectra by theCassini orbiter show that the adjacent terrain exhibits abrightness suggestive of differences in thermal structure or composition, possibly caused bycryovolcanism generated by the impact – a fluidizedejecta blanket and fluid flows, now water ice.[57][59] Such a region featuring a mix of organic compounds and water ice is a compelling target to assess how far theprebiotic chemistry may have progressed at the surface.[5]
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