NASA to send spacecraft to Saturn’s moon Titan in next breakthrough mission

For its next big mission to explore the Solar System, NASA has announced that it will land spacecraft this time on Saturn’s largest moon Titan.

Space agency NASA announced its upcoming mission called Dragonfly, which is aimed to send a spacecraft to Saturn’s moon Titan’s surface in order to look for signs of microbial life.

NASA engineer suggests to settle on Saturn’s moon if Earth becomes unlivable

BIG NEWS: The next @NASASolarSystem mission is… #Dragonfly – a rotorcraft lander mission to Saturn’s largest moon Titan. This ocean world is the only moon in our solar system with a dense atmosphere & we’re so excited to see what Dragonfly discovers: https://t.co/whePqbuGBq pic.twitter.com/BQdMhSZfgP

— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) June 27, 2019

Originally planned to launch in 2025, Dragonfly has been slightly delayed and will now launch in 2026, as per Engadget. It will spend nine years in flight and cover 840 million miles. The craft will then make a two-hour landing to Titan’s surface.

After its decent, Dragonfly will spend 2.7 years in making short flights to around 5 miles around the moon. These flights will take place around once every Titan day, which is an equivalent to around 16 Earth days.

The drone will be able to travel at almost 20 miles per hours, reaching altitudes as high as two miles. By the time its baseline mission is finished, the drone would have covered some 108 miles, which is almost double the distance traveled by all Mars rover combined.

Moreover, while traveling, the drone will make short stops at certain regions on Titan to gather samples. It has been believed that liquid water and complex organic materials such as hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen might have existed together of tens of thousands of years.

Video Courtesy: JHU Applied Physics Laboratory