NASA will send a space drone to explore one of Saturn's moons

NASA has received approval to send a drone-like space lander to study Titan, the largest of the 146 moons orbiting Saturn.

The launch of this project, called Dragonfly, is scheduled for July 2028. The rover-sized rotorcraft will be used to study prebiotic chemical processes on Titan.

If all goes according to plan, the drone will arrive on Titan in 2034. Here it will fly around a variety of potentially interesting sites to assess the suitability of Titan's environment for life and look for any signs that life may once have existed on the organic-rich moon. Thanks to Titan's denser atmosphere (about 4 times denser than Earth's), the device will be able to travel up to 8 km during an Earth day (16 Earth days).

During its 32-month mission, Dragonfly is expected to travel more than 174 km, which is more than the distance traveled by all NASA rovers. According to the agency's calculations, the total life cycle cost of the rotorcraft will be $3.35 billion, which is twice as much as was estimated when the project was announced in 2019.

“Dragonfly is an exciting science mission of interest to the wider community, and we are excited to take the next steps in this mission. Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft beyond Earth."

Nicky Fox, Deputy Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

NASA's announcement came as it bid farewell to Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter that sent its final signal back to Earth after flying in January.