NASA has planned a new mission to Titan, the giant moon of Saturn, which is set to launch in 2027. The mission, known as Dragonfly, has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the universe’s life development. After its arrival in the mid-2030s, Dragonfly will embark on a journey of exploration that could unveil the mysteries of the chemical processes at work on Titan. One of the critical instruments aboard Dragonfly is the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), which will assist scientists in studying Titan’s chemistry. By examining prebiotic chemistry, the mission may provide insights into the chemical reactions that transpired on Earth, leading to the formation of life. Overall, this mission holds tremendous promise for advancing our knowledge of the universe’s chemical evolution and life development.
In 2027, NASA will launch a new mission to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The Dragonfly mission will embark on a journey of discovery that could revolutionize our understanding of the development of life in the universe. Dragonfly will carry the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), which will help scientists remotely study the chemical composition of the Titanian surface. This will allow them to investigate the potential habitability of an extraterrestrial environment and the prebiotic chemical processes that may have occurred on Earth.
Dr. Melissa Trainer, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist specializing in Titan, is the lead for the DraMS instrument. The Dragonfly mission’s robotic rotorcraft will take advantage of Titan’s low gravity and dense atmosphere to fly between different points of interest on the moon’s surface, covering distances of several miles. This allows Dragonfly to access samples from environments with a variety of geologic histories.
Samples less than a gram in size will be collected at each site by the Drill for Acquisition of Complex Organics (DrACO) and brought inside the lander’s main body to the “attic,” which houses the DraMS instrument. The samples will be irradiated by an onboard laser or vaporized in an oven before being measured by DraMS. DraMS is designed to analyze the organic molecules present on Titan, their composition, and distribution in different surface environments.
Mass spectrometers like DraMS determine the chemical composition of a sample by ionizing the material and examining the chemical composition of the various compounds. DraMS was developed by the same team at Goddard Space Flight Center that developed the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite aboard the Curiosity rover. DraMS is designed to survey samples of Titanian surface material in situ, using techniques tested on Mars with the SAM suite.
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, is designing and building the rotorcraft-lander and overseeing the development of DraMS and other science instruments on Dragonfly. The team includes key partners from Goddard Space Flight Center, the French space agency, Lockheed Martin Space, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Langley Research Center, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Penn State University, Malin Space Science Systems, Honeybee Robotics, the German Aerospace Center, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Dragonfly is the fourth mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program and is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The mission is set to arrive at Titan in the mid-2030s and could provide a new understanding of the development of life in the universe.