Exploring Titan's Meteorology with Dragonfly
Abstract
Dragonfly is a rotorcraft lander mission (Fig. 1) currently in a Phase A study under NASA's New Frontiers Program that would take advantage of Titan's dense atmosphere and low gravity to visit a number of surface locations, studying how far chemistry can progress in environments that provide key ingredients for life. This mission architecture also permits and demands investigation of Titan's atmosphere. If selected for flight Dragonfly will launch in 2025 and arrive in 2034. It will spend over two Earth years on Titan's surface, long enough to observe many diurnal cycles, atmospheric waves, and perhaps even seasonal changes. Dragonfly will explore the meteorology of a number of different locations and terrains, and take vertical profiles of temperature, methane, and hydrogen to constrain diurnal mixing in the planetary boundary layer (PBL). Dragonfly will also contribute to atmospheric science by measuring surface properties, including soil moisture, conductivity and thermal inertia, the chemical composition of surface deposits (which may contain the products of high-altitude photochemistry), the saltation threshold of Titan's dune particles (which will aid interpretation of dune morphology), and the possible confirmation of fluvial sediments (which may inform our understanding of the hydrologic cycle). Dragonfly results will test and improve atmospheric models, enabling a deeper understanding of both the local and global Titan climate system.
- Publication:
-
European Planetary Science Congress
- Pub Date:
- September 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018EPSC...12..597R