Conceptual Design of the Dragonfly Lander

Dragonfly is a rotary-wing lander that will explore Saturn’s moon Titan, an ocean world that is not known to harbor life but is known to have a rich organic surface chemistry. Mobility on Titan via atmospheric flight will enable scientific coverage at multiple sites and provide significant geological diversity. Titan’s thick atmosphere and low gravity present advantages for the feasibility of flight and also present some technical challenges that are different from those of Earth-based flight. This paper describes the early conceptual design of Dragonfly as well as the key design parameters that influence mission performance.