Space: The Dragonfly mission to Titan is confirmed

Cairo: Mai Kamal El-Din

Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon evokes a space mission which will be one of the most impressive in the coming years: the Dragonfly mission, which has just been confirmed by NASA.

franceinfo: The Dragonfly mission will explore Titan, one of Saturn’s moons?

Mathilde Fontez: Yes, that’s it, the schedule was confirmed a few days ago by NASA, after numerous postponements and budget uncertainties. The mission is called Dragonfly, and it will take off in 2028, heading towards Titan, one of the moons of the gas giant Saturn. And yes, it’s an ambitious mission.

Firstly because it is a flying drone – dragonfly means dragonfly – it is a sort of 450 kilo helicopter which is being designed to explore Titan. Dragonfly will fly with eight rotors, like a large drone. It will be able to travel tens of kilometers in an hour. It will be only the second craft to fly in an extraterrestrial atmosphere, after the Ingenuity helicopter, which is currently on Mars.

Except that Dragonfly will be 6 times further from Earth: Titan is 1.3 million kilometers from our planet – on average. It will take 6 years for the probe to reach it. It will arrive in 2034…

So Dragonfly will study this moon?