This artist mockup of Dragonfly soaring over Titan’s dunes has… well, Dune vibes. | Image: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben

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

Targeting a July 2028 launch, the agency announced on Tuesday that it can now complete the final design for Dragonfly — a Mars rover-sized rotorcraft that will be used to detect “prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and the early Earth before life developed.”

If all goes according to plan, the eight-rotor drone is scheduled to arrive at Titan in 2034, where it will fly to dozens of “promising locations” to characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment and hunt for any signs that life once existed on the organic-rich moon. Titan’s denser atmosphere (around four times that of Earth’s) will aid the…

Continue reading…