A NASA mission led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory is being collaborated on by a University of Idaho Professor Jason Barnes and graduate student Shannon MacKenzie. The mission will be launched in 2027, with drone landing on Titan in early 2030.
“We’ve started the initial proposal, which was sent in 2016 and were selected for flight by NASA. We won the competition against 11 other proposals,” Barnes said. “But various NASA constraints, usually budgetary, have pushed us back so that we’re actually not launching until 2027.”
Barnes is the deputy principal investigator for the Dragonfly mission. Barnes said the process to be selected by NASA can take up to eight or nine months.
“NASA takes these things very seriously if they’re going to spend $850 million on a space mission, they want to make sure they pick the right one,” Barnes said. “There were actually two rounds. There was a first step, wherein they selected from 12, down to two, then NASA provided us $5 million of funding to be able to refine our mission proposal and concept and to do some advanced work.”
MacKenzie, UI graduate and co-investigator, worked alongside Barnes to draft the proposal for the Dragonfly project.
“We were working on the proposal at the end of my time as a graduate student and submitted it,” MacKenzie said. “We didn’t find out about whether or not it was selected until December.”
A part of MacKenzie’s graduate work was to study the surface of Titan.
“For someone at the end of my Ph.D., spending five and a half years studying the surface of Titan, the thought of going back there and actually answering the questions that my thesis was centered on but couldn’t answer, because we don’t have the right data, was just beyond tantalizing,” MacKenzie explained. “A once in a lifetime kind of dream situation.”
The goal of the Dragonfly project is to study the sand dunes of Titan and what makes up the composition of the surface. Barnes stated that the atmosphere of Titan has Methane in it.
“That methane has been subjected to solar ultraviolet that busts it up and reforms it into really complex, organic carbon bearing molecules that are sitting on the surface,” Barnes said.
Barnes stated that Titan has conditions that resemble what early Earth may have been like.
“We think the conditions may resemble early Earth and therefore allow us to probe the conditions of the formation of life on Earth,” Barnes said. “The actual conditions behind the formation of life are sort of lost to history because they’ve been destroyed by geology and other events.”
Elizabeth Turtle, principal investigator, spoke about the interest in Titan at the Philosophical Society of Washington about the Dragonfly mission.
“In a surprisingly short span of time, in less than a couple of decades, Titan has gone from a mystery haze shrouded moon,” Turtle said. “We didn’t know what was on the surface, to some place that’s amazingly familiar considering what materials it’s made out of.”
Turtle stated that surface geology is behaving the same way as it does on Earth, but with different materials.
Turtle discussed how Titan allows for the ability to travel for the Dragonfly drone.
“On Titan, we have and atmosphere and it’s not only providing us with this enriched environment, it makes it possible for us to get to different places,” Turtle said. “Because heavier-than-air flight is very efficient on Titan. If you were on Titan and put on wings, you could fly. The gravity is low and the atmosphere is denser.”
Designing the drone itself is currently in the works, being built at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore.
“It’s a pretty complex thing to be able to design a vehicle that flies on another planet, and then you have to get there,” Barnes said. “It’s kind of a real challenge, because it’s very different than most NASA planetary landers. Most planetary landers don’t have to go through air.”
Barnes said that designing electronics and instruments to survive on Titan has been forgiving.
“On Titan the atmosphere shields us completely from radiation, we don’t have to worry about that at all,” Barnes said. “In some ways, it’s really challenging, it’s really cold, you have to worry about drag through the air and that sort of thing. In other ways, it’s not as bad as there’s no radiation, but the temperature is pretty stable, unlike on Mars.”
While MacKenzie and Barnes worked on the scientific portion of the proposal, both are still advising those working on the engineering aspect of the drone.
“One of my jobs now is in supporting the project scientist. I’m the Assistant Project Scientist and what that means is I’m sitting in on the instrument meetings,” MacKenzie said. “For example, like the Dragonfly camera meetings, the engineers are there and they’re talking about how their design is coming along and maybe they need to modify it. They are trying to talk to the science team and say okay, if we make these modifications, how is that going to affect your ability to do the science?”
With the Dragonfly project launch date being 2027, MacKenzie still is anticipating the work to be done.
“This is my first rodeo, I’m not entirely sure what to expect. I’m not excited about having to wait so long but there is so much work in preparation to launch,” MacKenzie said. “It’s kind of like an extreme ramp up. Getting everything designed and then tested and then extra double tested.”
Barnes stated that while waiting for Dragonfly to land on Titan, it is about preparing until that time.
“I will hire on a bunch of students and postdocs that will help analyze the data, they will come down and write scientific papers, hopefully learn a lot about Titan,” Barnes said. “So. like a rover, we don’t just land and then hit go to do science… the science team will be involved in deciding where to fly and when to fly.”
Barnes also discussed how honored he is to be able to work on this mission.
“Being able to be involved with any mission, much less having it be the mission that I invented, (and) to be selected by NASA to fly is absolutely a life dream come true. I just could not be happier to be here.” Barnes said.
Daniel V. Ramirez can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter @DVR_Tweets