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Episode 123: Soaring over the surface of Titan: NASA’s Dragonfly Mission

By Gurbir Dated: May 29, 2025 Leave a Comment

Dr Elizabeth Turtle and a scale model of Dragonfly. Credit: NASA

It is December 2034. A spacecraft launched from Earth in July 2028, enters Titan’s atmosphere at 5km/s. Around 2 hours later, it softly lands on the surface at less than 1m /s. Over the next three years, NASA’s Dragonfly mission, a rotorcraft the size of a small car, will chemically analyse the Titan’s atmosphere, ground and a little of its subsurface.

In this interview recorded on 24th April 2025 in Oxford during Breakthrough Discuss, Dr Elizabeth Turtle, Principal Investigator, on the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s largest mission – Titan.

Some of the topics Dr Turtle covers include

  • Dragonfly’s scientific objectives to explore complex organic chemistry and understand the steps that occurred before biology took hold on Earth, helping us learn about our own chemical origins.
  • Dragonfly isn’t just landing; it’s designed to fly from place to place. Over its nominal mission lifetime of a little over three years, it expects to visit 30-40 different landing sites.
  • Flying on Titan is actually easier than flying on Earth because its atmosphere is four times denser and its gravity is only one-seventh of Earth’s.
  • An overview of the Dragonfly – large rotorcraft, technically an X8 octacopter, roughly the size of a small car or the large Mars rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance.
  • Dragonfly is powered by an MMRTG, a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, which provides both the electricity and the crucial heat needed to keep the lander’s interior warm in Titan’s frigid environment.

With a launch set for July 2028 and arrival at Titan in December 2034, Dragonfly promises to reveal the detailed chemistry of this unique world. Launch dates are always susceptible to change. The Cassini-Huygens mission that arrived at Saturn/Titan in 2004 was launched in 1997. Saturn orbits the sun every 30 years. If Dragonfly misses the July 2028 launch window, there may be another thirty-year wait!

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Visit to Mount Teide Observatory

By Gurbir Dated: April 3, 2025 Leave a Comment

Teide Observatory. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. Tenerife 1st April 2025.
An astronomical centre of excellence in the Northern Hemisphere
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), recognized by the Spanish government as a “Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence”, is a nationally funded research centre that runs two of the best international observatories in the world.

I visited with Jerry Zhang, who is completing his Phd on the topic of Brown Dwarfs. Podcast coming soon.

Where is the Teide Observatory ? Check out this very short Google Earth video.

Some pictures

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Partial Solar Eclipse 29 March 2025

By Gurbir Dated: March 29, 2025 Leave a Comment

Early on Saturday, 29 March 2024, the clouds cleared and a partial solar eclipse was visible in the sky from Puerto De La Cruz in Tenerife. Surprisingly, it was the first clear day and sunny for almost a week.

The sunspot activity was not particularly high, despite the fact that, right now, the sun is going through a maxima in its 11 year cycle. For comparison, I have included a picture of the sun from December last year. Note the increased amounts of sunspots compared with those seen during today’s partial solar eclipse.

A brief time-lapse video

Here is one from last year

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Lunar Eclipse 13-14 March 2025

By Gurbir Dated: March 11, 2025 Leave a Comment

In the UK, you need to get up early to see the lunar eclipse this week on Thursday night or Friday morning. It starts at about 4 a.m. and is totally eclipsed by around 6:30 a.m., just a couple of minutes before the moon sets. Since it occurs near the Moon-set, it will be low in the western sky.

Lunar Eclipse 13-14 March 2025 from the UK

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon enters the Earth’s shadow, it does not disappear but takes on an intense red colour.

It will cause lots of headaches for the teams managing spacecraft on the lunar surface and in lunar orbit. Solar power is their only power source, so they will need to prepare several hours of ‘no sunlight’!

More at the skyandnight magazine here https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/total-lunar-eclipse-march-2025.

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