Dragonfly is NASA's 4th New Frontiers program mission that will send a robotic rotorcraft to fly within the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan to sample materials and determine surface composition in different geologic settings, advancing humanity's search for the building blocks of life. The craft is a large quadcopter with double rotors with mass of about 875 kg, featuring rotors of 1.35 m in diameter. It can fly through several kilometers within an hour and will perform 1 flight per Titan day (~16 Earth days). During the planned 3.3-year mission, Dragonfly is expected to cover distance up to several hundred km. Dragonfly will use a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) to power its instruments. The planned science instrument suite is: * DragonCam: Camera Suite * DrACO: Drill for Acquisition of Complex Organics * DraMS: Mass Spectrometer * DraGNS: Gamma-ray and Neutron Spectrometer * DraGMet: Geophysics and Meteorology
The Falcon Heavy is a variant of the Falcon 9 full thrust launch vehicle and consists of a standard Falcon 9 rocket core, with two additional boosters derived from the Falcon 9 first stage.
See DetailsSpace Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars. SpaceX operates from many pads, on the East Coast of the US they operate from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and historic LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. They also operate from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, usually for polar launches. Another launch site is being developed at Boca Chica, Texas.
INFO WIKINASA has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to launch a multibillion-dollar mission to Saturn’s moon Titan in 2028. The post NASA selects Falcon Heavy to launch Dragonfly mission appeared first on SpaceNews.
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…
A batch of 21 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
Glonass-K2 are the fourth generation of satellite design for GLONASS satellite navigation system. GLONASS is a Russian space-based navigation system …
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Progress resupply mission to the International Space Station.
Commercial Earth observation satellites (~540 kg each) built by CAST for China Siwei Survey and Mapping Technology Co. Ltd., with resolution down to …
A batch of 21 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
This is the second mission of Nova-C lunar lander developed and built by Intuitive Machines. This time it carries a NASA payload called PRIME-1 (Pola…
NS-30 is the 10th crewed flight for the New Shepard program and the 30th in its history.
A batch of 22 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
Ku-band geostationary communication satellite for China Satcom at 110.5° East, replacing ChinaSat 10.