Skip to main content

NASA's Dragonfly final mission to study Titan will move forward with the design phase.

 



NASA's Dragonfly mission is advancing to the final mission design and fabrication stage, Phase C, in fiscal year 2024. The mission, aimed at sending a rotorcraft to investigate Saturn's moon Titan, successfully met all criteria during the Preliminary Design Review earlier this year. Despite the postponement of formal confirmation, which includes total cost and schedule details, until mid-2024, the Dragonfly team has re-planned the mission based on anticipated funding in FY 2024. The revised launch readiness date is estimated for July 2028, with an official assessment scheduled at the Agency Program Management Council in mid-2024.


The Dragonfly team has successfully overcome a number of technical and programmatic challenges in this daring endeavor to gather new science on Titan," expressed Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. She added, "I am proud of this team and their ability to keep all aspects of the mission moving toward confirmation.


Dragonfly is pioneering planetary exploration by utilizing a rotorcraft-lander, marking the first time such a technology will be employed to travel between and sample diverse sites on Titan. The mission's objectives include characterizing the habitability of Titan's environment, investigating the progression of prebiotic chemistry in an area where carbon-rich material and liquid water may have mixed over an extended period. Additionally, Dragonfly aims to search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life may have existed on Titan.


Dragonfly, currently undergoing development, is managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which serves as the mission manager for NASA. The collaborative initiative includes key partners from various institutions and organizations, such as NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Lockheed Martin Space, Sikorsky (a Lockheed Martin company), NASA’s Ames Research Center, NASA’s Langley Research Center, Penn State University, Malin Space Science Systems,Honeybee Robotics, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) in France, DLR (German Aerospace Center) in Germany, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in Japan.


Dragonfly is the fourth mission within NASA’s New Frontiers Program and is under the oversight of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, within the Science Mission Directorate. This collaborative effort highlights the international and interdisciplinary nature of the mission, bringing together expertise from various institutions and countries to explore Titan.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

JWST Just Dropped a Space Banger – Meet HH 30, the Cosmic Baby Star with an Attitude!

  ๐Ÿš€Hubble Found It, Webb Flexed on It! NASA, ESA, and CSA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) just hit us with another mind-blowing “Picture of the Month,” and this time, it’s all about HH 30 —a baby star with a dramatic flair! Sitting pretty in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, this young star is rocking a protoplanetary disc that’s literally glowing with potential future planets. And oh, it’s got some serious jets and a disc wind to show off!   ๐Ÿ’ซ What’s So Special About HH 30? Ever heard of Herbig-Haro objects? No? Cool, neither did most of us until now! These are glowing gas clouds marking the tantrums of young stars as they spit out jets of gas at supersonic speeds. HH 30 is one of them, but with a twist—it’s a prototype edge-on disc, meaning we get a front-row seat to the magic of planet formation!   ๐Ÿ“ก Webb, Hubble & ALMA—The Ultimate Space Detective Team.   To break down HH 30’s secrets, astronomers went full detective mode using:   ✔️...

Solar Storm Shocker: Earth Gets a Cosmic Makeover with Two New Radiation Belts!

  The May 2024 solar storm formed two new radiation belts between the Van Allen Belts, with one containing protons, creating a unique composition never observed before. Picture this: May 2024, the Sun throws a massive tantrum, sending a solar storm hurtling toward Earth. The result? Stunning auroras light up the skies, GPS systems go haywire, and—wait for it—Earth gets two brand-new *temporary* radiation belts! That’s right, our planet just got a cosmic upgrade, thanks to the largest solar storm in two decades. And no, this isn’t a sci-fi movie plot—it’s real science, folks!   Thanks to NASA’s Colorado Inner Radiation Belt Experiment (CIRBE) satellite, scientists discovered these new belts, which are like Earth’s Van Allen Belts’ quirky cousins. Published on February 6, 2025, in the *Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics*, this discovery is a game-changer for space research, especially for protecting satellites and astronauts from solar storm shenanigans. ...

NASA/ESA Hubble Telescope Captures Image of Supernova to Aid Distance Measurements.

  The Hubble Space Telescope has recently captured a striking image of a supernova-hosting galaxy, located approximately 600 million light-years away in the constellation Gemini. This image, taken about two months after the discovery of supernova SN 2022aajn, reveals a bright blue dot at the center, signifying the explosive event. Although SN 2022aajn was first announced in November 2022, it has not yet been the subject of extensive research. However, Hubble's interest in this particular supernova lies in its classification as a Type Ia supernova, a type that is key to measuring cosmic distances. Type Ia supernovae occur when a star's core collapses, and they are particularly useful for astronomers because they have a predictable intrinsic brightness. No matter how far away a Type Ia supernova is, it emits the same amount of light. By comparing its observed brightness to this known luminosity, astronomers can calculate how far away the supernova — and its host galaxy — are from...