It will be the first mission to explore the surface of Titan, which is the only moon in our solar system with a substantial atmosphere and liquid on the surface that could potentially harbour life.
It even has a weather system like Earth’s, although its rains methane instead of water.
Dragonfly’s goals include searching for chemical biosignatures, investigating the moon’s active methane cycle, and exploring the prebiotic chemistry currently taking place in Titan’s atmosphere and on its surface.
“Titan represents an explorer’s utopia,” said Alex Hayes, a Dragonfly co-investigator. “The science questions we have for Titan are very broad because we don’t know much about what is actually going on at the surface yet. For every question we answered during the Cassini mission’s exploration of Titan from Saturn orbit, we gained 10 new ones.”
The Cassini probe, which was launched in 1997, orbited Saturn for 13 years, but Titan’s thick methane atmosphere made...