The Dragonfly mission is scheduled to launch around 2026, with a projected arrival date of 2034. The probe will be a dual-quadcopter that will use a plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator (there’s definitely no way to operate a solar-powered probe on a moon that’s nine hundred million miles from the Sun and has a dense hazy atmosphere) to power its rotors, allowing it to make multi-kilometer “hops” from one point on the Titanian surface to another, taking pictures and sampling the air and surface to determine their chemical compositions and so on.
Well, this is very cool (and I say that not just because the temperature on Titan is -290° below zero Fahrenheit). A denser atmosphere than Earth’s! Dunes where the “sand” is water ice, frozen so hard it’s a mineral! Rain and rivers and seas of liquid methane and ethane! Yeah!!!
I just hope it actually gets launched in time to get there before I drop dead of something.
Are you serious? Titan is amazing! I still have the Huygens probe images on my office wall — the methane sea coast looking like New Jersey (Sandy Hook, Barnegat Bay…). And we’re not going to get there again for another 15 years? I can’t wait!
The current estimated total costs for the Dragonfly mission are equal to:
One-twenty-seventh as much as what Americans spend each year on diamonds.
A bit less than one percent of what Americans spend annually on fast food, and a bit more than one percent of what Americans spend annually on gambling.
About six-tenths of a percent of the cost of the food that Americans throw away each year.
Approximately 0.07% as much as the total costs of the F-35 program.
(Any or all of the numbers I’m basing this on may be a few years out of date. Or may not have been all that accurate in the first place. So sue me!)
