Dragonfly: In Situ Aerial Exploration of Titan's Prebiotic Chemistry and Habitability

NASA's upcoming New Frontiers mission, Dragonfly, is a rotorcraft lander designed to perform in situ investigation of the chemistry and habitability of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.  The only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, Titan has abundant complex carbon-rich material on its icy surface, and there have been opportunities for these organics to have mixed with liquid water on the surface in the past, and potentially with the liquid-water ocean within Titan's interior.  As a result, Titan is a singular destination to seek answers to fundamental astrobiology questions about the habitability of other worlds in our solar system and prebiotic chemical processes like those that led to the development of life here on Earth.  Dragonfly takes advantage of Titan's dense atmosphere and low gravity to fly from place to place, exploring diverse geological settings to sample and measure detailed compositions of surface materials and observe Titan's geology and meteorology.  During its ~3-year mission, Dragonfly will make multidisciplinary science measurements at a few dozen landing sites to determine how far organic chemistry has progressed in environments that have provided key ingredients for life and characterize Titan's habitability.

Speaker: Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle