NASA to explore new avenues on Saturn's moon Titan with mission called 'Dragonfly'

NASA is set to launch a new mission to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, in 2027. Upon its arrival in the mid-2030s, the mission, known as Dragonfly, will embark on a voyage of exploration that has the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the evolution of life in the cosmos.

One of the primary tools aboard the Dragonfly spacecraft will be the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), which has been designed to assist scientists in analysing the chemistry taking place on Titan. This instrument may also help to illuminate the prebiotic chemistry processes that occurred on Earth and paved the way for the emergence of life.

Because of its rich and complex carbon-based chemistry, interior ocean, and evidence of past liquid water on its surface, Titan represents an excellent opportunity to investigate prebiotic chemical reactions and explore the possibility of life in an extraterrestrial environment, stated NASA.

The Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS) carried by the Dragonfly mission will enable scientists to remotely analyse the chemical composition of Titan's surface from Earth. “We want to know if the type of chemistry that could be important for early pre-biochemical systems on Earth is taking place on Titan,” according to Dr. Melissa Trainer of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

Trainer is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist who specialises in Titan and is one of the Dragonfly mission’s deputy principal investigators. She is also lead on the DraMS instrument, which will scan through measurements of samples from Titan’s surface material for evidence of prebiotic chemistry.

To accomplish this, the Dragonfly robotic rotorcraft will capitalise on Titan’s low gravity and dense atmosphere to fly between different points of interest on Titan’s surface, spread as far as several miles apart. This allows Dragonfly to relocate its entire suite of instruments to a new site when the previous one has been fully explored, and provides access to samples in environments with a variety of geologic histories.

At each site, samples less than a gram in size will be drilled out of the surface by the Drill for Acquisition of Complex Organics (DrACO) and brought inside the lander’s main body, to a place called the “attic” that houses the DraMS instrument. There, they will be irradiated by an onboard laser or vaporised in an oven to be measured by DraMS. A mass spectrometer is an instrument that analyses the various chemical components of a sample by separating these components down into their base molecules and passing them through sensors for identification.

Instrument to focus on prebiotic chemistry: NASA

Trainer, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist with a specialisation in Titan, serves as one of the deputy principal investigators for the Dragonfly mission. She also leads the team responsible for the DraMS instrument, which will analyse samples from Titan's surface for signs of prebiotic chemistry.

To achieve this goal, the Dragonfly mission will deploy a robotic rotorcraft that takes advantage of Titan's low gravity and dense atmosphere to fly between multiple sites of interest that are spread several miles apart on the moon's surface. This approach enables Dragonfly to relocate its suite of instruments to new sites when a previous location has been fully explored, providing access to samples from environments with diverse geological histories.

NASA said the Drill for Acquisition of Complex Organics (DrACO) will extract samples that weigh less than one gram from the surface, which will then be transported inside the lander's main body to an area known as the "attic", where the DraMS instrument is located. Here, the samples will be either irradiated by an onboard laser or vaporised in an oven to enable their analysis by DraMS. A mass spectrometer is a tool that can identify various chemical components of a sample by breaking them down into their constituent molecules and passing them through sensors for detection.

“DraMS is designed to look at the organic molecules that may be present on Titan, at their composition and distribution in different surface environments,” said Trainer. Organic molecules contain carbon and are used by all known forms of life. They are of interest in understanding the formation of life because they can be created by living and non-living processes, explained NASA. 

Dragonfly is the fourth mission in NASA’s New Frontiers programme. New Frontiers is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate Washington.