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NASA will mount a mission to travel to Titan, Saturn's moon

Dragonfly on Titan


We want to achieve something bold by taking measured risks ." These are the words used by NASA to target their next goal: Titan, the widest of Saturn's moons. 

The NASA announced Thursday that his next mission to explore our solar system ... will take place on Titan! The moon of Saturn will have the opportunity to receive visitors.

A new environment to discover


His name? Dragonfly. It's the goal? Fly over Titan's surface like a drone. The moon of Saturn has a fascinating environment, which NASA's robot could tell us more about. Its atmosphere, much richer in hydrocarbons than Earth, will be the subject of a thorough study for about two years. 

But visiting Titan presents some risks, which NASA understands by stating that a " great nation is doing great things ", referring to the Apollo mission of more than half a century ago. Indeed, the thick atmosphere of the moon of Saturn had already been studied: in 2004, a small space probe had only held 90 minutes on its surface., but almost familiar, with its lakes and rivers of liquid methane.

Dragonfly-on-Titan-1


An expensive operation


Dragonfly (Dragonfly, in French) will cost NASA $ 1 billion, which plans to start the mission in 2026 for the robot to arrive on Titan in 2034. 

The latter will land - so to speak - in the equatorial region of this moon, covered with vast sand dunes. A thermoelectric radioisotope generator will recharge a battery, which in turn feeds the Dragonfly rotorcraft flight system for about twenty flights on the surface of Titan, for a period of two and a half years. During this period, the robot will cover about 180 km, a big piece of this moon of 5 149 km in diameter, about 1.5 times the size of our good old Moon.

The search for potential traces of life on the planets of our solar system does not end: after the traces of methane found on Mars, what to expect on Titan? 

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