NASA's Dragonfly spacecraft will land at Titan's Selk Crater
NASA's Dragonfly is an Ocean Worlds Exploration Program (OWEP) equipped to probe Titan—Saturn's largest moon—for hints of chemical building blocks of life. It is set for launch in 2027 and would arrive at the moon in 2034 on a 32-month mission. The eight-bladed rotorcraft is proposed to land at the Shangri-la dune field, 80km from Selk crater, an icy terrain of sand dunes.
Why does this story matter?
Space missions invariably probe for signs of life-supporting elements and the objective behind NASA's Dragonfly is no different. Now, Titan might be the perfect destination for the spacecraft since it has methane lakes and rivers on the surface and even a subsurface ocean of liquid water. There might be an abundance of carbon-rich chemistry in these areas which might provide crucial insights.
The space craft can cover 16km during each flight
Dragonfly will carry a suite of equipment including a mass spectrometer, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, a couple of geophysical and meteorological sensors, a seismometer, and a variety of cameras. It is scheduled to fly across Titan and each flight would last approximately 30 minutes, covering a distance of 16km. The spacecraft's landing site faces the Earth and allows for direct-to-Earth (DTE) communication.
The landing site consists of sand dunes and icy ground
A team of planetary scientists from Cornell University have conducted an extensive study on Dragonfly's landing site by analyzing radar images obtained from Cassini spacecraft, which studied Saturn between 2004 and 2017. "It rains liquid methane sometimes, but it is more like a desert on Earth - where you have dunes, some little mountains, and an impact crater," said Léa Bonnefoy, the lead scientist.
The radar images might have missed out on 'small rivers'
The research work has been published in The Planetary Science Journal. By using radar reflectivity and angled shadows, the scientists have mapped six terrains at the landing site, characterised its landscape, and estimated the rim height of the Selk crater. However, earlier in 2005 the Huygens probe, part of the Cassini mission, sent back images of river valleys which are invisible in radar images.
