NASA's mission
to
Titan
, Saturn's giant moon
, is called
Dragonfly
and could become one of the most important in history if it achieves its goal:
discovering the chemistry that gave rise to life.
Precisely the mission of the US space agency
will carry a mass spectrometer (DraMS)
, designed to analyze the detailed chemical composition of this celestial body.
NASA key mission objective
Another of the objectives of the mission to this moon, which will be
launched in 2027
, is also to shed light on
prebiotic chemistry
, the chemical pathways that occurred on the early Earth and that ultimately led to the formation of life, as reported days ago. .
NASA's Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan will launch in 2027.
"We want to know if the kind of chemistry that could be important to Earth's first pre-biochemical systems is taking place on Titan," explained
Melissa Trainer, a NASA astrobiologist
, and spreads
RT.
The
Dragonfly robotic helicopter
will take advantage of Titan's low gravity and dense atmosphere to collect samples from different surface points of interest, separated by several kilometers.
An instrument for study
In turn, they explain that the DraMS instrument is designed to examine
in situ
the material samples taken by Dragonfly.
The colorful globe of Titan passes in front of the planet and its rings in this true-color snapshot from the Cassini spacecraft.
Photo: NASA/JHU-APL
Also, it will allow in the permanent search for the conquest of space and its secrets, to study, remotely, its chemical composition.
Trainer remarks: "DraMS is designed to
observe the organic molecules
that may be present on Titan, their composition and distribution in different surface environments."
The Dragonfly scientists didn't want to "reinvent the wheel" when trying to search for organic compounds on Titan, so they relied on established methods that have
already been applied on Mars and elsewhere.
"This design has given us an instrument that is very flexible, that can
be adapted to different types of surface samples
," they point out.
This would be the landing of "robotic dragonflies" on Saturn's moon.
Illustration: NASA/JHU-APL
About the Dragonfly mission
Dragonfly
will be the fourth mission in NASA's New Frontiers program.
As stated, its launch is scheduled for 2027 and
it will reach Saturn's moon Titan in the mid-2030s.
Dragonfly is, as its name indicates in English, a
dragonfly... but robotic.
Similar to what happens with
Ingenuity on Mars
, it is expected to fly over the surface of Titan to collect all kinds of data and send it back to Earth.
Saturn has dozens of moons, one of which is Titan.
It is larger than Ingenuity and will not be accompanied by a rover as is the case with its analogue on the red planet
.
It should be remembered that Saturn has
53 moons
that do not even have a name.
In addition,
there are still 29 more moons to be confirmed.
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