NASA's Mission to Titan by Diane Burton

When I read that NASA has a new mission, and it's to Titan, Saturn's moon, I did a happy dance. (I'm sure you heard the thudding.) I am still geeked about this. I wrote a novella, Mission to New Earth, that starts on Titan. Two years later, Liza O'Connor wrote Destination: Titan, Book 1 of her Leaving Earth series. I researched so much about Titan to write my book that I thought I knew a lot about Saturn's largest moon. Then, Liza wrote many blog posts about that place. Wow. I didn't know as much as I thought.

Thank goodness for NASA and all its pictures.

Anyway, I feel like I have a special affinity for the newest of NASA's future explorations. Scientists think that Titan is now what Earth was billions of years ago. By researching this moon, they believe it will "revolutionize what we know about life in the universe."

You know how NASA sent Rover (a land-based robotic vehicle) to Mars, its job to scoop up dirt and analyze it? The mission to Titan will be fantastically different. Dragonfly is a rotocraft, and it will fly to dozens of locations, picking up surface materials and taking off again to fly to the next location. 

What's so special about Titan? 

If you saw the 2009 movie Star Trek (J.J. Abrams' reboot of the ST franchise), you'll remember that spectacular sequence when the Enterprise comes out of warp in Titan's atmosphere. Was that cool or what?

Dragonfly will use 13 years of data gathered by the Cassini spacecraft. Titan has clouds, rain, rivers, lakes, and oceans of methane and ethane, (Guess we won't be swimming there.) It also has sand dunes and mountains.  It's the second largest moon in our solar system and bigger than Mercury. Titan has a nitrogen-based atmosphere, like Earth. The most important reason to find out more about Titan is that it's filled with such a variety of organic compounds that it could tell us more about the building blocks of life.

I hope I live long enough to see Dragonfly do its thing. It will leave Earth in 2026 and won't get to Titan until 2034. But if I'm still around, you'll find me glued to the TV, just like when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.


Now for a commercial break. 

Mission to New Earth, a science fiction novella

Earth’s overpopulation and dwindling resources force the United Earth Space Agency to expedite exploration of new planets for a possible new home. When new crises ensue—a giant tsunami and the threat of nuclear winter—the timeline changes. Eight years of training crammed into four. Sara Grenard and her team prepare for launch, but are they ready for the one-way trip? Will the Goldilocks planet prove just right for Earth’s inhabitants? Before time runs out.

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If you want to read more about the Dragonfly Mission and Titan, go to  https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/titan/overview

For more photos of Titan, go to  https://www.space.com/12638-amazing-photos-titan-saturn-moon.html