Drill for Acquisition of Complex Organics for Dragonfly Mission

Drill for Acquisition of Complex Organics (DrACO) is a sample acquisition and delivery system for the Dragonfly New Frontiers mission to explore Titan. The goal of the mission is to assess Titan's habitability and investigate its prebiotic chemistry. Dragonfly is an octocopter lander and will perform numerous vertical takeoffs and landings to pre-scouted locations. At each site, Dragonfly will have the option to use DrACO sampling system to acquire Titan surface material for detailed compositional analysis. Selected in June 2019, Dragonfly is scheduled to launch in 2027 and arrive on the Titan surface in the mid-2030s.

The purpose of the DrACO system is to capture Titan surface and near-surface material and deliver it to DraMS (Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer). DraMS operates in two measurement modes: Laser Desorption Mass Spectrometer (LDMS) and Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS).

DrACO consists of four major subsystems: The Sample Acquisition Drills (SAD), the Pneumatic Transport System (PTS), the Sample Delivery Carousel (SDC), and DrACO Avionics. Material is suctioned directly through the drill bit, and pneumatically conveyed in a fast-moving stream of ambient Titan air. This helps to minimize temperature rise, reducing risk of sample alteration or fouling of the transport system. In contrast to traditional sample transfer systems, the DrACO pneumatic architecture is gravity agnostic. The end-to-end system features two sampling drills, which offers site selection capabilities at a single site, and two redundant suction blowers in a "cross-strapped" configuration: either drill can deliver sample to either LDMS or GCMS cups using either blower.

Extensive testing is being performed to characterize the behavior of a range of Titan simulants (both room temperature and cryogenic analog materials) during drilling, transport and collection. Two chambers have been used to date: Titan Cryo Chamber for simulating Titan's low temperature (this chamber is at Honeybee Robotics) and Titan Pressure Environmental Chamber (TPEC) for simulating Temperature and Pressure (this chamber is at JHU-APL). Major accomplishments include tests of drilling into cryogenic material, pneumatic pickup and transport of simulants, sampling at Titan-like conditions and end-to-end demonstration of the entire sampling chain.

DrACO successfully completed Preliminary Design Review at NASA GSFC on 3-5 May, 2022.