The Solar System continues to be a limitless place of wonders for astronomers. Saturn’s moon Titan has captured the attention of NASA for quite some time. The natural satellite of the gas giant even possesses all the elements necessary for sustaining life.
Could we ever move to Titan? Probably yes, in the not-so-near future. Could the moon already be inhabited by other life forms? Astronomers don’t rule out the idea. In fact, they are determined to find out the answer soon enough.
NASA’s Dragonfly mission reaches Titan in the mid-2030s
The Dragonfly mission of NASA implies the sending of a relocatable rotorcraft lander to the surface of Titan in the mid-2030s. According, to Phys.org, the mission has big scientific goals.
The team behind the Dragonfly mission are aiming to use the robot for searching for chemical biosignatures, exploring the prebiotic chemistry from the moon’s atmosphere and on its surface, investigating the methane cycle, etc.
Alex Hayes, who is a Dragonfly co-investigator and an associate professor of astronomy at the College of Arts and Sciences, was very honest and said according to Phys.org:
Titan represents an explorer’s utopia,
The science questions we have for Titan are very broad because we don’t know much about what is actually going on at the surface yet. For every question we answered during the Cassini mission’s exploration of Titan from Saturn orbit, we gained 10 new ones.
Cassini has been orbiting planet Saturn for 13 years, but it wasn’t so useful for uncovering the secrets held by Titan. The thick atmosphere of Saturn’s moon was too much to handle, as Cassini was unable to identify the materials from the surface.
The Dragonfly team detailed their mission in The Planetary Science Journal.