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During the Cbadini mission, which studied Saturn and its close moons in 2017, NASA learned a bit more about the curious moon Titan. Cbadini's Huygens satellite was developed by the ESA (European Space Agency) and scans the clouds that cover the natural satellite, generating 153 minutes of transmission – enough time to send atmospheric data and images of its surface. 19659002] The probe then discovered that Titan was a world even stranger than we had imagined, but strangely familiar, to shelter mountainous terrain and lakes (although the lakes are composed not of water but of methane ). liquid state). About 2% of the moon's surface is liquid, the surface temperature being negative at 180 degrees. At this temperature, the methane from the surface evaporates, then its molecules are dissociated by the sun's rays that reach the atmosphere, thus producing ethane.
The US Space Agency should decide, in 2019, whether the Dragonfly mission will even leave the newspaper or will eventually choose a project also to study, which aims to collect samples from a comet. If Dragonfly was chosen in 2019, the ship would be launched in 2025 and arrive at Titan in 2034. It is true that Cbadini provided us with new discoveries on the moon of Saturn and that Huygens came to land there, providing unprecedented images. . However, Cbadini did not have a good view of her surface and Huygens spent a few hours without being able to move through the ground.
Thanks to drone technology, Dragonfly could explore dozens of places over a two-year period, which would give us a lot more information (and great pictures) within reach. Scientists know that Titan contains a large amount of organic compounds, but neither Cbadini nor Huygens were able to collect enough data to clarify the details of the planet's chemistry. The Dragonfly probe would then be able to identify organic compounds to accurately determine how close these "titanic" molecules would be to those found on Earth.
In December, the Dragonfly team provided NASA with a detailed conceptual report. and wait for the decision of the space agency until the end of the first half of 2019.
Source: Space.com
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