The Dragonfly, a $1 billion US drone, will carry a major Cnes-funded instrument to Saturn’s moon in 2027.
After twenty years of robotic exploration of Mars, NASA now sees more. In 2027, the US space agency will attack Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. And this time it will not be with a rover, but a 450-kg unmanned helicopter called Dragonfly, the cost of which is estimated at one billion dollars. France will be privileged to be a part of this extraordinary flight thanks to the signing at the beginning of the year of a cooperation agreement between the French space agencies (Cnes) and the United States (NASA).
“We are very proud, because it was the Americans who came to look for the French laboratories to produce one of the main tools of the expedition. It was not us who knocked on their door so that we could participate” says Gabriel Pont, Cnes Director of the French Contribution to Dragonfly. This is a chemical analyzer that will be used to identify the molecules present on Titan’s surface.
very low gravity
For French scholars…
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