Dragonfly: A Titan Expedition of Exploration

Dragonfly is a proposed mission concept to send a rotorcraft-lander to Saturn’s large, exotic moon, Titan. Designed to sample surface materials and determine composition in different settings, this revolutionary mission concept offers the capability to explore diverse locations and characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry, and even to search for chemical hints of water-based or hydrocarbon-based life.

The Dragonfly dual-quadcopter would fly to dozens of sites, tens to hundreds of miles apart. Titan’s dense, calm atmosphere and low gravity make flying ideal; the rotorcraft could travel from its initial landing site to explore areas several hundred miles away, though Dragonfly would spend most of its mission making science measurements on the ground.

Led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Dragonfly is a finalist to become the next mission in NASA’s New Frontiers planetary science program. Key partners include Penn State University, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center, Ames Research Center, Langley Research Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Honeybee Robotics and Malin Space Science Systems. New Frontiers is managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Planetary Science Division in Washington.