Drone to search for life on Saturn’s moon Titan
NASA plans to fly a drone copter to Saturn’s largest moon Titan in search of the building blocks of life.
For its next mission in the solar system, NASA plans to fly a drone copter to Saturn’s largest moon Titan in search of the building blocks of life, the space agency said yesterday.
The Dragonfly mission, which will launch in 2026 and land in 2034, will send a rotorcraft to fly to dozens of locations across the icy moon, which has a substantial atmosphere and is viewed by scientists as an equivalent of very early-era Earth.
It is the only celestial body besides our planet known to have liquid rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, though these contain hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, not water.
“Visiting this mysterious ocean world could revolutionise what we know about life in the universe,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine.
“This cutting-edge mission would have been unthinkable even just a few years ago, but we’re now ready for Dragonfly’s amazing flight.”
NASA said the vehicle would have eight rotors and fly like a large drone.
“During its 2.7-year baseline mission, Dragonfly will explore diverse environments from organic dunes to the floor of an impact crater where liquid water and complex organic materials key to life once existed together for possibly tens of thousands of years,” the agency said.
“Its instruments will study how far prebiotic chemistry may have progressed. They also will investigate the moon’s atmospheric and surface properties and its subsurface ocean and liquid reservoirs.
“Additionally, instruments will search for chemical evidence of past or extant life.”
The craft will land first at the equatorial Shangri-La dune, exploring the region in short trips before building up to longer “leapfrog” flights of 8km. It will collect samples before reaching the moon’s Selk impact crater, where there is evidence of past liquid water, organic materials and energy. The hope is it will eventually fly more than 175km.
Titan’s atmosphere is made mostly of nitrogen, like Earth’s, but four times denser. Its clouds and rains are methane. The second-largest moon in the solar system, Titan has a thick ice crust, beneath which is an ocean made primarily of water. The underground ocean could harbour life, while the hydrocarbon lakes and seas on the moon’s surface could contain life forms that rely on different chemistries.
Titan is about 1.4 billion kilometres from the Sun, with surface temperatures of -179C and surface pressure about 50 per cent higher than Earth.
AFP