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NASA to send a probe to Saturn...The search for alien life just got a whole lot more interesting. NASA has just announced plans to send a rover to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and our solar system’s second largest natural satellite (behind Jupiter’s Ganymede). It is even larger than Mercury. The mission is named as Dragonfly and would feature a rover with eight rotors to enable flight. It is fitted with numerous instruments to collect samples and carry out tests. Furthermore, it is designed to fly to numerous locations on Titan throughout the duration of the mission in an effort to conduct a comprehensive exploration of the satellite. Flying would be easier and could cover a larger area since Titan’s gravity is a fraction of the Earth’s.
Titan is the only moon which is known to have a reasonably dense atmosphere. It has rivers, lakes and even oceans filled with liquid methane. The satellite is rich in organic matter and it is also known to have water in the past. A dense atmosphere with loads of organic matter makes it a suitable candidate for supporting life. These life forms could be tiny multicellular specimens or even single cell bacteria with rudimentary biological functions.
The mission is planned for launch in 2026 and the probe would take eight years to reach Titan. Saturn is about 746 million miles (1.2 billion kilometers) from Earth. This mission won’t be the first time a probe lands on Titan. The Huygens probe successfully landed there in January of 2005, making it the farthest landing from Earth.