When it descends through the thick golden haze on Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft will find eerily familiar terrain. Dunes wrap around Titan’s equator. Clouds drift across its skies. Rain drizzles. Rivers flow, forming canyons, lakes and seas. But not everything is as familiar as it seems. At minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit, the dune … Read more
NASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the Dragonfly mission, a rotorcraft lander mission under NASA’s New Frontiers Program, designed to explore Saturn’s moon Titan. The mission will sample materials and determine surface composition in different geologic settings, advancing our search for the building blocks of life. The firm-fixed-price contract has a value … Read more
Dragonfly is being designed and built under the direction of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which manages the mission for NASA. The team includes key partners at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado; Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company; NASA’s Ames Research Center in … Read more
Dragonfly Team Utilizes Unique NASA Facilities to Shape Its Innovative Titan-bound Rotorcraft With its dense atmosphere and low gravity, Saturn’s moon Titan is a great place to fly. But well before NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft lander soars through Titan’s skies, researchers on Earth – led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland … Read more