NASA has greenlit plans to send the Dragonfly drone to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and asses its habitability

NASA has been given the go-ahead to send a flying drone-like lander to explore Titan, the largest of Saturn’s 146 moons.

As reported by The Verge, the agency announced on Tuesday that it is targeting a launch in July 2028 for Dragonfly, a Mars rover-sized rotorcraft. The purpose of Dragonfly is to investigate and detect prebiotic chemical processes that were prevalent on both Titan -one of Saturn's moons- and early Earth before life developed.

Assuming the mission proceeds as planned, the eight-rotor drone is expected to reach Titan in 2034. Once there, it will explore numerous promising locations, assessing the habitability of Titan's environment and searching for any indications of past life on the moon, which is rich in organic compounds. The rotorcraft will take advantage of Titan's denser atmosphere, approximately four times denser than Earth's, to "hop" up to five miles during each full Titan day, which lasts 16 Earth days.

Dragonfly is expected to cover a distance of more than 108 miles during its mission, which spans 32 months. This distance is greater than the cumulative mileage covered by all of NASA's Mars and Earth-Moon rovers combined.

In terms of costs, NASA estimates that the total lifecycle expenditure for the Dragonfly project will amount to approximately $3.35 billion. This is roughly twice the initial projected cost when the project was initially announced in 2019.

“Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission,” said Science Mission Directorate associate administrator Nicky Fox in NASA’s press release.

“Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth.”

Yesterday’s announcement from NASA was made alongside a farewell to Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter that has now sent its final transmission to Earth following its final flight in January.