NASA’s New Frontiers Program is currently developing a new mission called Dragonfly, which is being designed and built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Elizabeth Turtle serves as the principal investigator for the mission, which is being managed by APL for NASA. The team working on Dragonfly includes key partners from several institutions, including NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Lockheed Martin Space, NASA’s Ames Research Center, NASA’s Langley Research Center, Penn State University, Malin Space Science Systems, Honeybee Robotics, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CNES, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and JAXA.
Dragonfly aims to explore and study various aspects of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It is the fourth mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program and is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington D.C. The mission will provide valuable insights into Titan’s atmosphere and liquid methane lakes to better understand its potential to harbor life or environmental conditions conducive to life in the future.
