Sharmila Kuthunur is a Seattle-based science journalist covering astronomy, astrophysics and space exploration. Follow her on X @skuthunur.
NASA's delayed Dragonfly drone mission to Saturn's largest moon Titan is on track to launch in July 2028, the space agency confirmed late Tuesday .
The highly anticipated decision greenlights the mission team to proceed to final mission design and testing in preparation for the revised launch date.in 2034. For the next 2.5 years, the nuclear-powered drone is expected to perform one hop every Titan day — 16 days to us Earthlings — hunting for prebiotic chemical processes at various pre-selected locations on the frigid moon, which is known to contain organic materials.
That final price tag is significantly higher than the initially proposed cost for Dragonfly, whose development was capped at $1 billion when it wasin 2019 as the fourth mission in NASA's New Frontiers program.
Over a decade before Dragonfly actually flies on Titan, several of the drone’s components, including its control and navigation systems, have been tested on Earth. In July 2022, mission engineers flew a drone identical to Dragonfly over California’s Imperial Dunes, which resemble Titan’s organic-rich dunes, andat NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. NASA's official confirmation on Tuesday allows the mission to proceed to final design stages.
"Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission," Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in the statement."Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth.
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