And... Proto-Planetary Exploration, By Rotorcraft: The Dragonfly Project At NASA, Cleared Major Design Review -- Aiming To Explore... Titan, 'Round Saturn.

This potential mission passed a major engineering/design review in early March, and awaits next steps for budgetary allocations, etc., so it has a ways to go yet. . . but the idea would be, in the early 2030s, it might land on Saturn's moon Titan, long suspected of having organics. . . and hop about, looking for them.

It is a much advanced version of the Ingenuity tech, and designed specifically for Titan's much lower gravity and thin hazy proto-atmosphere. As I say, it is a good distance until we might even see it get a potential launch window, but very exciting just the same:

. . .Led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, the team recently crossed a major milestone on that path, successfully passing all the technical requirements and standards of the weeklong Preliminary Design Review (PDR) that wrapped up on March 3. . . .

The PDR – a requirement for all NASA missions – covers topics such as spacecraft design, mission requirements, science plans, schedule, cost, and risk. Held at APL, which manages the mission and will build and operate the Dragonfly lander, the PDR included more than 60 presentations to a panel of external experts tasked with evaluating and assessing mission progress for NASA. . . .

“The team did a fantastic job,” said Dragonfly Principal Investigator Zibi Turtle, also of APL. “Everyone worked so hard to make sure the review board had a clear idea not just of the great progress we've made to close out the design but of our technical challenges, and how we plan to overcome them. We’re incredibly excited to have completed this step, and are ready to continue our work on the next phase of Dragonfly development -- including testing in the large Titan-environment chamber here at APL over the next year.”

Dragonfly centers on a game-changing approach to planetary exploration, employing a rotorcraft-lander to travel between and sample diverse sites on this mysterious world. Dragonfly will characterize the habitability of Titan's environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry in an environment where carbon-rich material and liquid water may have mixed for an extended period, and even search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life once existed on Titan. . . .

Now you know -- and this concludes our "space science weekend" of postings. Grin. . . .

नमस्ते