“This milestone essentially marks the birth of our flight system,” Elizabeth Turtle, Dragonfly principal investigator at APL, said in a NASA statement<\/a> on Tuesday (March 10).<\/p>\n Article continues below <\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \n From left, Carlisa Drew, Seth Harvey, Anthony Fanelli, Emory Toomey and TJ Lee conduct power and functional testing on Dragonfly\u2019s Integrated Electronics Module (IEM) and Power Switching Unit (PSU) in the cleanroom at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. The IEM is Dragonfly\u2019s \u201cbrain,\u201d containing the spacecraft\u2019s core avionics; the PSUs control the flow of power to Dragonfly\u2019s instruments and systems. (Image credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins APL\/Ed Whitman)<\/p>\n “Building a first-of-its kind vehicle to fly across another ocean world in our solar system<\/a> pushes us to the edge of what’s possible, but that’s exactly why this stage is so exciting,” Turtle added. “The team is doing an outstanding job, and every component we install and every test we run brings us one step closer to launching Dragonfly to Titan.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The car-sized Dragonfly will be the second rotorcraft to explore the skies of a world beyond Earth. The first was NASA’s Mars<\/a> helicopter Ingenuity<\/a>, whose fuselage was only the size of a tissue box<\/a>. The solar-powered Ingenuity was designed for just a handful of hops but survived an ambitious flight campaign that lasted nearly three years, from April 2021 to January 2024.<\/p>\n Building on what NASA learned, Dragonfly will be bigger \u2014 and powered by nuclear energy, not the sun. The Titan drone is also a full mission, costing about $3.35 billion; Ingenuity was a technology demonstrator with a price tag of just $85 million.<\/p>\n Dragonfly is expected to launch in 2028 toward Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and second-largest satellite in the solar system, behind Jupiter’s Ganymede<\/a>. Titan is thought to be rich in the precursor molecules<\/a> of life as we know it, which makes it an exciting target for scientists, but it has been studied up close just once \u2014 by the European Huygens<\/a> lander, which survived for a few hours in Titan’s skies and on its surface on Jan. 14, 2005.<\/p>\n After touching down on Titan, Dragonfly aims to “explore a range of diverse sites to study the chemistry, geology and atmosphere of the terrestrial moon and ultimately advance our understanding of life’s chemical origins,” NASA officials stated. But first, the mission needs to be readied for space.<\/p>\n At APL, the first weeks of testing will focus on the spacecraft’s integrated electronics module \u2014 a sort of “brain” for the mission that focuses on items like guidance, navigation and data handling \u2014 and power-switching units.<\/p>\n Testing and integration is expected to continue into early 2027. The spacecraft will next be shipped to Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado for systems testing, before a brief return to APL to assess how Dragonfly will do in the space environment. APL will send Dragonfly to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center<\/a> no earlier than spring 2028, to launch aboard a SpaceX<\/a> Falcon Heavy rocket.<\/p>\n![\"four](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/tP9raq3VRW2mMXmJCHFvQh.jpg\")
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