NASA: 'Saturn's Titan moon will be our next stop'
The US Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has officially announced a new mission concerning the introduction of a spacecraft containing unmanned aerial models on Saturn's moon Titan, in order to study specifically. surface, topography and geology of this planet.
This difficult but also particularly meaningful 'mission' was named Dragonfly by NASA, and received an extremely valuable grant from its own New Frontiers program. (New Frontiers is a fundraising program that sponsors ambitious tasks in discovering new objects and crystals of our Solar System).
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Titan: Dragonfly Moon Discovery Project
'Basically, Dragonfly is a large drone model, equivalent to drones that have been used in many Mars discovery missions, but will be tweaked a bit in design and focus. especially on flexibility, allowing them to fly, 'jump' from one place to another on Titan moon without spending too much time ', Elizabeth' Zibi 'Turtle, the next chief supervisor Dragonfly said.
Dragonfly has a fairly square appearance with both length and width falling more than 3m, and is equipped with dual-quadcopter dual-rotor propeller engines. With the optimal design and the presence of a total of 8 propulsion rotors, Dragonfly will perform exploration leaps on the planet's surface within 8 or 9 miles (12-14 km) in more than one hours. This figure is unimpressive compared to the large drone models operating on Earth, but given the harsh climatic conditions of Titan's moon, as well as the need for research, it is relatively flexible.
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Dragonfly will spy on future landing locations, and spend a lot of time to sample the surface and observe the weather. In fact, the use of surface reconnaissance robots will be more effective, but the climate and environmental characteristics on Titan make it difficult to deploy robots on the ground, thus The use of drones will be the best option.
Gravity on Titan's moon is only one-seventh of that of Earth, and the atmosphere on this planet is also four times more dense than our planet. All of these characteristics make the deployment of flying devices the perfect alternative to "walking". Even according to NASA experts, humans can fly on Titan if equipped with artificial wings.
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Environmental conditions on Titan are suitable for drone operation
Dragonfly is not the only scientific work to be considered for this New Frontiers award. Another equally important mission has received the attention of cosmologists around the world that is the CAESAR project, led by Professor Steve Squyres at Cornell University, which will work towards the task Collect some essential specimens on the surface of the comet and bring it back to Earth to serve more in-depth research.
Both Dragonfly and CAESAR have overcome many rounds of 'brainstorming' before the final decision. However, scientists found Dragonfly to be more urgent, and the noble New Frontiers award along with extremely valuable funding was given to this project.
If implemented in accordance with the proposed plan, Dragonfly will greatly expand the human vision of the solar system planets far from the earth - in this case, Saturn's Titan moon One of the planets has extremely important meaning. This planet possesses extremely strange chemical characteristics. In addition, its unusually dense atmosphere has also intrigued scientists for decades.
More importantly, titanium and earth are currently the only objects in the Solar System known to contain significant amounts of liquid on the surface. While a plurality of liquids have been found in other planets in the solar system that are often buried deep below the surface.
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Titan is the second planet in the Solar System that contains significant amounts of liquid on the surface
As planned, Dragonfly will be launched into Earth orbit in 2026 and will set foot on Titan soonest and in 2034. Thus, we will definitely have to wait a long time to get the first images. The surface of this planet is sent by Dragonfly.
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