Dragonfly Eyes Titan: NASA’s nuclear-powered drone to hop across methane seas in search of life’s chemical clues

NASA has greenlit Dragonfly, a car-sized, eight-rotor, nuclear-powered rotorcraft that will hop across Titan’s surface to sample its methane/ethane environment and investigate the chemistry that could precede life. Slated to launch in 2028 and arrive around 2034, the mission will study the ground between hops for complex organic molecules over roughly three Titan days, offering the first powered flight on another world and exploring whether Titan’s alien chemistry could host the steps toward biology, with ocean questions beneath its icy crust still under discussion.