BULLUNGAN, Dennis A.

Humss-12 St. Augustine

“New Information about Dragonfly Mission”

Titan, Saturn’s icy moon, will be NASA’s next solar system destination in a few years,
according to a new update provided by the space agency.

On Thursday, NASA announced that it will be exploring Titan with the Dragonfly
mission, which will fly multiple sorties to sample and analyze sits around the icy moon. The
Dragonfly mission, which will launch in 2026 and arrive in 2034, is the first time NASA will fly
a multi-rotor vehicle for science on another planet, said a NASA press release. With the
Dragonfly mission, NASA can accelerate its search for prebiotic chemical processes that are
present on Titan and our planet and advance its space exploration initiatives.

Titan might provide scientists clues on how life began on Earth. During its 2.7-year
journey, Dragonfly, which flies like a drone and has eight rotors, will visit Titan’s mesmerizing
surface, which includes organic dunes and the floor of an impact crater where complex organic
materials and liquid water once existed many years ago. Using its instruments, it will investigate
Titan’s atmospheric and surface properties, along with its liquid reservoirs and subsurface ocean.
Additionally, Dragonfly will also search for chemical evidence of past or existing life.

Using 13 years of Cassini data, Dragonfly selected a serene weather period for landing,
along with a safe landing site and some core targets. NASA said it will first touch down at the
equatorial “Shangri-La” dune fields and explore this area in short flights, with the goal of
conducting longer “leapfrog” flights of up to five miles that will involve sample collection.
Eventually, it will arrive at the Selk impact crater, where evidence of past organics and liquid
water is present.

“Titan is unlike any other place in the solar system, and Dragonfly is like no other
mission. It’s remarkable to think of this rotorcraft flying miles and miles across the organic sand
dunes of Saturn’s largest moon, exploring the processes that shape this extraordinary
environment,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “Dragonfly
will visit a world filled with a wide variety of organic compounds, which are the building blocks
of life and could teach us about the origin of life itself.”

Dragonfly is part of NASA’s New Frontiers program, which also includes the New
Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt and Juno to Jupiter. New Frontiers aims to
explore parts of the solar system that are top priorities to the greater planetary community.
Insight:

I believe that NASA is pushing the boundaries between Human knowledge and
expanding the limit of technology our next frontier mission dragonfly will explore saturn’s
largest moon Titan. Dragon Fly will be the first drone lander with the capabilities to fly over a
hundred miles titan thick atmosphere. The dragonfly can help us to investigate organic
chemistry and evaluate habitability and search for chemical signature of past or even present life
the revolutionary mission will help us to form a great knowledge for us to learn more things
about the solar system. A great nation does great things that is why we need to unite for us to
search more unexplainable things and make everything clear. Through the advancement of
technology we can explore the world and the whole universe easily. The Universe is full of
mysterious thing that is why eagerness to learn and to discover is a must to get an accepted
explanation of every creature living in Universe and to search for the availability of everything in
this world. With the Dragonfly mission, NASA will once again do what no one else can do.
Visiting this mysterious ocean world could revolutionize what we know about life in the
universe. This cutting-edge mission would have been unthinkable even just a few years ago, but
we’re now ready for Dragonfly’s amazing flight.

References:

https://www.geek.com/news/saturns-moon-titan-will-be-nasas-next-solar-system-destination-
1793751/?source

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1144357396497743872/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5
Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1144357396497743872&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.geek.com%2Fne
ws%2Fsaturns-moon-titan-will-be-nasas-next-solar-system-destination-1793751%2F