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NASA’s dragonfly


NASA’s dragonfly travels to TITAN


Saturn’s moon Titan is the second-largest moon and natural satellite in our solar system. It is even larger than planet mercury and only 2 percent smaller than
the largest moon of the solar system, Ganymede. Titan is the only place in the solar system besides Earth known to have liquid lakes, rivers, seas but all are of methane and ethane. Titan’s atmosphere also has some similarity with that of Earth. It is mostly made of nitrogen but the pressure on its surface
is 50% more than that of Earth. We still do not know whether it can harbour life or not. Titan may or may not be a lifeless world. However, the surface temperature is much more different than that of
Earth’s. Titan’s average surface temperature is -179 degree Celsius which is too cold.

NASA has announced the dragonfly mission to TITAN which will launch from Earth in 2026 and land on the surface of Titan in 2034 after exploring it. The cost of the entire project is around $1 billion. The rover will fly through several places on Titan and collect samples from the particular sites. It has 8 rotors and will fly like a drone which will take advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere almost 4 times denser than earth. The dragonfly will be nearly a 3-year mission where it will explore diverse environments, search for liquid water and also the existence of past life around thousands of years ago with special instruments. Dragonfly will take advantage of the data collected in the Cassini mission to choose a calm weather period for landing. It will first land on the equator, where it will diversely explore the location. Finally, it will reach the selk impact crater where there are evidences of past liquid water and organics. The lander will fly for 108 miles(175 km) and collect samples and return to Earth. This shall further advance our understanding of the solar system.




Written by- Subhadeep Mukherjee
ECE A(1st Year)

Comments

  1. Tanmoy ChakrabortyApril 30, 2020 at 11:41 PM

    I'm really excited about the mission !!

    ReplyDelete

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