Why is NASA Spending $1 Billion on a Single Probe To Titan? | Unveiled

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Why Is NASA Spending $1 Billion on a Single Probe to Titan?</h4>

If all goes to plan, 2027 will see the launch of one of the most exciting space missions of the 21st century so far. Yes, NASA may be sending humans back to the moon, and we continue to look at Mars as a potential second home, but the Dragonfly probe is heading all the way to Saturn’s moon, Titan. However, with such a big price tag, what can we expect it to uncover?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question: why is NASA spending $1 billion on a single probe to Titan?

Slated for launch by NASA in June 2027, the Dragonfly rotorcraft is projected to arrive on the surface of Titan in 2034. Touching down in the Shangri-La dune fields, it will make a series of flights towards the Selk Crater, an impact crater that scientists believe will contain a mix of organic compounds and water ice ejected from the moon’s interior. This baseline mission is then expected to last for 32 months. However, as we know from other probe initiatives, they can last for far longer, depending on how the equipment holds up. The Opportunity rover, for example, which was launched in 2003, only had a planned mission duration of three months upon arriving on Mars… but ended up operating for 15 years. So it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Dragonfly will achieve a similar feat - providing key information long into the future. 

Right now, however, at the very start of its journey, and long before it has gotten off the ground, the progress reports around Dragonfly are also read with budget in mind - with a reported $1 billon price tag attached to this particular machine. So, what do you get for that money?

Dragonfly will be the second rotorcraft ever to fly on a celestial body; the first being Ingenuity on Mars, which since its deployment in 2021 has been a roaring success. Our Titan craft is much larger than Ingenuity though, closer to the size of a full, ground-based rover - about the size of a small car. A quadrotor with double blades - meaning that there are eight in total - Dragonfly really somewhere between a drone and a helicopter. The extra rotors will also help it cope in the event of one rotor breaking or experiencing a malfunction. Dragonfly’s power source will be a nuclear battery called an “RTG” – a radioisotope thermoelectric generator - and these actually have been used in space missions before. Dragonfly needs a nuclear power source specifically because Titan, its destination, is so far from the sun. Although, this is, again, somewhat similar to the setup for the Mars rovers, as Curiosity and Perseverance had RTGs installed in addition to solar panels. Also using RTGs are our interstellar probes, like New Horizons and both Voyagers.

But why are we so interested in exploring Titan up close, in the first place? Getting to Saturn takes at least three years, although some journeys (including Dragonfly’s) will take as long as seven, thanks to the variable distances between Saturn and Earth. In order to gain enough velocity for its journey, Dragonfly will need to pass by Earth three further times to boost its speed, and it will perform a fly-by of Venus, too. Clearly, it’s extremely difficult, then, to get to Titan. Only after these gravity assists will it head towards the outer solar system… so why bother? Couldn’t we spend the time and money required for the mission on something else, like further Martian or lunar projects? These could feasibly lead to a permanent human presence on an alien world far sooner… but, still, Titan gets the nod. 

Ultimately, Titan is phenomenally interesting in its own right. And potentially crucial for the future. It’s Saturn’s largest moon, and unlike the moons of Mars and Earth, we know it has surface liquid. In fact, Titan has huge lakes - although you couldn’t drink from them, as they’re made of liquid methane and ethane, not water. Still, as toxic as methane would be if you tried to consume it, there’s nothing like this on any other body in the solar system other than Earth. While other bodies have water ice and some are believed to have subsurface oceans of water, Titan’s surface liquid makes it unique. And, what’s more, it DOES have the more traditional water ice as well, so there may well be a reliable water source… should we ever need it. 

As well as that, Titan has a very dense atmosphere. In fact, it’s SO dense that, until Cassini flew by it in the mid-2000s, we didn’t actually know about those liquid lakes at all. The thick atmosphere is why, in images from space, Titan looks flat and featureless… and why it wasn’t until quite recently that it became a primary target of interest for NASA, and others. During its mission, Cassini released a lander, the Huygens lander built by the European Space Agency, which sent back images from Titan’s surface - initially revealing Titan’s exciting potential. Huygens was successful, but it only operated for a few hours, before running out of battery as planned. Dragonfly is something of a follow up, then, set to be totally different, and with a much longer mandate.

Dragonfly will be equipped with many scientific instruments, including a mass spectrometer, a seismometer, and a variety of cameras. This will help watching researchers to study the chemical makeup of the moon and, potentially, to see if Titan might hold some kind of microbial life. Of course, this would be the holy grail… and some think the chances are high. It’s not as though Titan could be described as Earth-like, exactly, but we know (from studies on Earth) that it is possible for creatures to exist in certain environments that we’d usually consider inhospitable; like on the underside of glaciers, for example. Compared to most of the rest of the solar system, Titan appears to have a reasonable grounding for similarly unusual life to potentially take hold - and if it has, then Dragonfly is tasked with finding it.

Any lifeforms Dragonfly might discover would need to be adapted to some seriously weird conditions, however. Titan does have a weather system something like ours, but it again relies on methane rather than water - with methane rain, as well as rivers and valleys forged by it, and large dunes. The surface temperature of Titan is vastly different (and much lower) than here on Earth, however, which is something NASA kept in mind while designing the probe. On average, it’s minus-290 degrees Fahrenheit, far colder than the record lowest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth, minus-128.6 degrees. This means it’s more than twice as cold on Titan than it is in Antarctica, hence why methane and ethane – usually gasses on OUR planet – are able to instead form in vast lakes and seas. Some of those Titan trademark liquid bodies are as large (if not larger) than Earth’s biggest lakes. Titan’s largest lake, the aptly named Kraken Mare, is bigger than the Caspian Sea on Earth, and almost the size of all five Great Lakes put together. During its time there, Dragonfly might be able to move close to these bizarre bodies to liquid, to take images of them, which in itself would be astounding, and a major moment for space study.

Elsewhere, and that dense atmosphere, while cold, will also provide a benefit; helping to protect Dragonfly against solar radiation, along with the extreme distance from the sun. This means that radiation is less of a worry on Titan than it is on, say Mars, which is much closer to the sun and has a much thinner atmosphere. However, with Dragonfly, we DO have to worry about (and pay attention to) gravity. Titan has low gravity, less gravity than even the moon, which would make any hypothetical visit to it by humans very difficult… especially since, to make a years-long journey to Titan worthwhile, those humans would need to be living there for a long time, and perhaps indefinitely. Creating artificial gravity on a planetary body is something that’s currently beyond us… so perhaps those humans would need to be based on an off-Titan orbital station, from which they could periodically visit the surface. Then again, by the time we get to that stage, where sending humans to Titan is even an option, perhaps we’ll have found better workarounds. These are all things Dragonfly will hopefully help us understand, and maybe even to plan for, once its mission is underway.

So, what do YOU think Dragonfly will find when it arrives on this alien world? How do YOU think the mission could impact our future? And, encompassing all of that, what’s your verdict on the $1 billion price tag? Let us know in the comments.

Here, NASA clearly isn’t doing things by halves, and is committed to exploring this particular solar system body. And, while $1 billion is certainly massive, it’s also not that unusual in the world of space exploration. The Perseverance rover to Mars cost more than double that, coming in at $2.4 billion, while NASA’s renewed lunar program, Artemis, carries an estimated (and eye watering) budget of $93 billion. In comparison, then, to that… Dragonfly actually starts to look quite cheap. 

There is always the possibility that the cost will balloon as the mission continues to develop, especially if it’s delayed as NASA launches often are, but those variables can’t yet be known. And, then again, there is one other aspect of Titan exploration that might, eventually, make Dragonfly worth the money, no question: return on investment. It’s thought that Titan is extremely resource-rich, containing massive reserves of oil and natural gas. It has huge potential for wind and tidal power, too, if, by the time we reach it, we’ve finally moved beyond fossil fuels. According to some predictions, then, Titan could become the energy center of the solar system if humanity ever starts to colonize other worlds.

Naturally, there’s a long way to go before that takes shape… but, nevertheless, Dragonfly could one day be remembered as a key early study. By some metrics, Titan is the most Earth-like non-Earth body in our entire star system, more promising than our nearest neighbors like the moon, Mars, or Venus… and it could prove to be a vital part of the future of our species. And that’s why NASA is spending $1 billion on a single probe to it.