NASA/JPL to send rotocraft drone "Dragonfly" to Titan

[gary]

AFP is reporting that NASA will send a rotorcraft drone to Titan which will
search for the building blocks of life.

The mission is named "Dragonfly" and will launch in 2026 and land in 2034.

Originally Posted by AFP

The hope is the lander will eventually fly more than 108 miles (175 kilometers).

Titan's atmosphere is made mostly of nitrogen, like Earth's, but is four times denser. Its clouds and rains are methane.

The second-largest moon in the solar system, Titan has a thick water ice crust, beneath which is an ocean made primarily of water.

The underground ocean could harbor life as we know it, while the hydrocarbon lakes and seas on the moon's surface could contain life forms that rely on different chemistries—or the body could be lifeless.

Titan is about 886 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) from the Sun, with surface temperatures of around -290 degrees Fahrenheit (-179 degrees Celsius) and surface pressure about 50 percent higher than Earth.

Story, pictures, animations here :-
https://phys.org/news/2019-06-nasa-d...itan-life.html

NASA JPL Dragonfly web site :-
http://dragonfly.jhuapl.edu/

[cannon_gray (Cannon Gray)]

The maximum speed that the drone can reach is 18 km/h. From a single charge, a dragonfly flies for a maximum of 8 minutes, and it takes 12 minutes to charge it. Apparatus of this type has never been used outside the Earth. Scientists hope the dense atmosphere and low gravity will allow Dragonfly to travel long distances and sample from dozens of points on Titan's icy surface.