If you ignore the dark orange sky and the extreme cold, Saturn’s moon Titan might remind you of Earth. River channels empty into lakes and seas. Giant fields of dunes ripple across the surface. And clouds float through the sky, producing occasional rains.
And if everything goes to plan, we should get some amazing views of that landscape in the next decade. A nuclear-powered “octocopter” will fly across the surface, covering several miles with each trip. It’ll monitor the weather and analyze the soil. Most important, it’ll search for elements of life – and evidence of life itself.
Dragonfly is one of the most ambitious missions yet conceived. It’s scheduled for launch in 2028, and arrival at Titan six years later.
Titan is about half-again the size of Earth’s moon. It has a cold, dense atmosphere that’s topped by “smog.” The atmosphere, surface, and lakes appear to contain lots of organic compounds – the building blocks of life. Except for the extreme cold, it may be a lot like Earth was about three-and-a-half billion years ago – at the dawn of life on our planet. So Dragonfly will help scientists determine if Titan is habitable – another home for life.
Saturn is near our moon tonight. It’s close to the lower left of the Moon at nightfall, and even closer as they set, before dawn. It looks like a bright star. But you need a telescope to spot Titan – the target for a dragonfly.
Script by Damond Benningfield