Johns Hopkins proposes flying probe for Titan mission

The Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University has submitted a proposal to NASA to send a nuclear-powered, instrument-carrying UAV to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, to determine whether conditions for life exist there. The mission, which would be part of NASA's New Frontiers program, would take advantage of the dense atmosphere and low gravity of Titan, which make it well-suited for flight, to visit multiple sites on the moon, hopping from place to place like the insect that gives it its name.

New Frontiers-class missions are designed to explore the outer reaches of the Solar system. So far, three missions have flown: the New Horizons probe which visited Jupiter’s moons in 2007, flew on to obtain the first detailed images of Pluto in 2015, and is currently exploring the Kuiper Belt. Two more missions are underway: Juno, which is in orbit around Jupiter and is investigating the composition, magnetic and gravitational fields of the giant planet; and Osiris-Rex, which is on its way to a carbon rich asteroid in a near-Earth orbit – it is designed to take a sample of the asteroid and returned to Earth for study in 2023. A fourth mission is scheduled to be selected for further study later this year.