Dragonfly

Mission Profile

Dragonfly is a NASA New Frontiers mission selected in 2019 to send a nuclear-powered rotorcraft to Saturn's moon Titan, planned for launch in 2028 aboard a Falcon Heavy and arriving at Titan in 2034. The octocopter would fly tens of kilometers at a time through Titan's dense nitrogen atmosphere, exploring multiple scientifically diverse sites during a 2.7-year surface mission. Key science objectives include characterizing Titan's prebiotic chemistry — which may resemble the conditions on early Earth — searching for biosignatures, and understanding the processes that create complex organic molecules in the atmosphere and deposit them on the surface. Dragonfly would be the first vehicle to fly to multiple locations on another world, combining the mobility of an aircraft with the in-situ measurement capability of a lander.