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Special contact lenses let you see infrared light – even in the dark
Special contact lenses let you see infrared light – even in the dark
Penguin poo helps keep Antarctica cool
Penguin poo helps keep Antarctica cool
A Public Health Researcher and Her Engineer Husband Found How Diseases Can Spread through Air Decades before the COVID Pandemic
Mildred Weeks Wells and her husband figured out that disease-causing pathogens can spread through the air like smoke
Chinese astronauts add debris shield to Tiangong space station during 8-hour spacewalk (video)
NASA’s Dragonfly Mission Sets Sights on Titan’s Mysteries
6 min read
NASA’s Dragonfly Mission Sets Sights on Titan’s MysteriesWhen it descends through the thick golden haze on Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft will find eerily familiar terrain. Dunes wrap around Titan’s equator. Clouds drift across its skies. Rain drizzles. Rivers flow, forming canyons, lakes and seas.
Artist’s concept of NASA’s Dragonfly on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. The car-sized rotorcraft will be equipped to characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry in an environment where carbon-rich material and liquid water may have mixed for an extended period, and even search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life once existed on Titan. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
But not everything is as familiar as it seems. At minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit, the dune sands aren’t silicate grains but organic material. The rivers, lakes and seas hold liquid methane and ethane, not water. Titan is a frigid world laden with organic molecules.
Yet Dragonfly, a car-sized rotorcraft set to launch no earlier than 2028, will explore this frigid world to potentially answer one of science’s biggest questions: How did life begin?
Seeking answers about life in a place where it likely can’t survive seems odd. But that’s precisely the point.
“Dragonfly isn’t a mission to detect life — it’s a mission to investigate the chemistry that came before biology here on Earth,” said Zibi Turtle, principal investigator for Dragonfly and a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “On Titan, we can explore the chemical processes that may have led to life on Earth without life complicating the picture.”
On Earth, life has reshaped nearly everything, burying its chemical forebears beneath eons of evolution. Even today’s microbes rely on a slew of reactions to keep squirming.
“You need to have gone from simple to complex chemistry before jumping to biology, but we don’t know all the steps,” Turtle said. “Titan allows us to uncover some of them.”
Titan is an untouched chemical laboratory where all the ingredients for known life — organics, liquid water and an energy source — have interacted in the past. What Dragonfly uncovers will illuminate a past since erased on Earth and refine our understanding of habitability and whether the chemistry that sparked life here is a universal rule — or a wonderous cosmic fluke.
Before NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission, researchers didn’t know just how rich Titan is in organic molecules. The mission’s data, combined with laboratory experiments, revealed a molecular smorgasbord — ethane, propane, acetylene, acetone, vinyl cyanide, benzene, cyanogen, and more.
These molecules fall to the surface, forming thick deposits on Titan’s ice bedrock. Scientists believe life-related chemistry could start there — if given some liquid water, such as from an asteroid impact.
Enter Selk crater, a 50-mile-wide impact site. It’s a key Dragonfly destination, not only because it’s covered in organics, but because it may have had liquid water for an extended time.
Selk crater, a 50-mile-wide impact site highlighted on this infrared image of Titan, is a key Dragonfly destination. Landing near Selk, Dragonfly will explore various sites, analyzing the surface chemistry to investigate the frozen remains of what could have been prebiotic chemistry in action. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Nantes/University of Arizona
The impact that formed Selk melted the icy bedrock, creating a temporary pool that could have remained liquid for hundreds to thousands of years under an insulating ice layer, like winter ponds on Earth. If a natural antifreeze like ammonia were mixed in, the pool could have remained unfrozen even longer, blending water with organics and the impactor’s silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and iron to form a primordial soup.
“It’s essentially a long-running chemical experiment,” said Sarah Hörst, an atmospheric chemist at Johns Hopkins University and co-investigator on Dragonfly’s science team. “That’s why Titan is exciting. It’s a natural version of our origin-of-life experiments — except it’s been running much longer and on a planetary scale.”
For decades, scientists have simulated Earth’s early conditions, mixing water with simple organics to create a “prebiotic soup” and jumpstarting reactions with an electrical shock. The problem is time. Most tests last weeks, maybe months or years.
The melt pools at Selk crater, however, possibly lasted tens of thousands of years. Still shorter than the hundreds of millions of years it took life to emerge on Earth, but potentially enough time for critical chemistry to occur.
“We don’t know if Earth life took so long because conditions had to stabilize or because the chemistry itself needed time,” Hörst said. “But models show that if you toss Titan’s organics into water, tens of thousands of years is plenty of time for chemistry to happen.”
Dragonfly will test that theory. Landing near Selk, it will fly from site to site, analyzing the surface chemistry to investigate the frozen remains of what could have been prebiotic chemistry in action.
Morgan Cable, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and co-investigator on Dragonfly, is particularly excited about the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS) instrument. Developed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with a key subsystem provided by the CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), DraMS will search for indicators of complex chemistry.
“We’re not looking for exact molecules, but patterns that suggest complexity,” Cable said. On Earth, for example, amino acids — fundamental to proteins — appear in specific patterns. A world without life would mainly manufacture the simplest amino acids and form fewer complex ones.
Generally, Titan isn’t regarded as habitable; it’s too cold for the chemistry of life as we know it to occur, and there’s is no liquid water on the surface, where the organics and likely energy sources exist.
Still, scientists have assumed that if a place has life’s ingredients and enough time, complex chemistry — and eventually life — should emerge. If Titan proves otherwise, it may mean we’ve misunderstood something about life’s start and it may be rarer than we thought.
“We won’t know how easy or difficult it is for these chemical steps to occur if we don’t go, so we need to go and look,” Cable said. “That’s the fun thing about going to a world like Titan. We’re like detectives with our magnifying glasses, looking at everything and wondering what this is.”
Dragonfly is being designed and built under the direction of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which manages the mission for NASA. The team includes key partners at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dragonfly is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
For more information on Dragonfly, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/dragonfly/
By Jeremy Rehm
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
Media Contacts:
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Mike Buckley
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
443-567-3145
michael.buckley@jhuapl.edu
Saturn
Saturn Moons
Our Solar System
Asteroids, Comets & Meteors
NASA’s Dragonfly Mission Sets Sights on Titan’s Mysteries
6 min read
NASA’s Dragonfly Mission Sets Sights on Titan’s MysteriesWhen it descends through the thick golden haze on Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft will find eerily familiar terrain. Dunes wrap around Titan’s equator. Clouds drift across its skies. Rain drizzles. Rivers flow, forming canyons, lakes and seas.
Artist’s concept of NASA’s Dragonfly on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. The car-sized rotorcraft will be equipped to characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry in an environment where carbon-rich material and liquid water may have mixed for an extended period, and even search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life once existed on Titan. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve GribbenBut not everything is as familiar as it seems. At minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit, the dune sands aren’t silicate grains but organic material. The rivers, lakes and seas hold liquid methane and ethane, not water. Titan is a frigid world laden with organic molecules.
Yet Dragonfly, a car-sized rotorcraft set to launch no earlier than 2028, will explore this frigid world to potentially answer one of science’s biggest questions: How did life begin?
Seeking answers about life in a place where it likely can’t survive seems odd. But that’s precisely the point.
“Dragonfly isn’t a mission to detect life — it’s a mission to investigate the chemistry that came before biology here on Earth,” said Zibi Turtle, principal investigator for Dragonfly and a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “On Titan, we can explore the chemical processes that may have led to life on Earth without life complicating the picture.”
On Earth, life has reshaped nearly everything, burying its chemical forebears beneath eons of evolution. Even today’s microbes rely on a slew of reactions to keep squirming.
“You need to have gone from simple to complex chemistry before jumping to biology, but we don’t know all the steps,” Turtle said. “Titan allows us to uncover some of them.”
Titan is an untouched chemical laboratory where all the ingredients for known life — organics, liquid water and an energy source — have interacted in the past. What Dragonfly uncovers will illuminate a past since erased on Earth and refine our understanding of habitability and whether the chemistry that sparked life here is a universal rule — or a wonderous cosmic fluke.
Before NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission, researchers didn’t know just how rich Titan is in organic molecules. The mission’s data, combined with laboratory experiments, revealed a molecular smorgasbord — ethane, propane, acetylene, acetone, vinyl cyanide, benzene, cyanogen, and more.
These molecules fall to the surface, forming thick deposits on Titan’s ice bedrock. Scientists believe life-related chemistry could start there — if given some liquid water, such as from an asteroid impact.
Enter Selk crater, a 50-mile-wide impact site. It’s a key Dragonfly destination, not only because it’s covered in organics, but because it may have had liquid water for an extended time.
Selk crater, a 50-mile-wide impact site highlighted on this infrared image of Titan, is a key Dragonfly destination. Landing near Selk, Dragonfly will explore various sites, analyzing the surface chemistry to investigate the frozen remains of what could have been prebiotic chemistry in action. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Nantes/University of ArizonaThe impact that formed Selk melted the icy bedrock, creating a temporary pool that could have remained liquid for hundreds to thousands of years under an insulating ice layer, like winter ponds on Earth. If a natural antifreeze like ammonia were mixed in, the pool could have remained unfrozen even longer, blending water with organics and the impactor’s silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and iron to form a primordial soup.
“It’s essentially a long-running chemical experiment,” said Sarah Hörst, an atmospheric chemist at Johns Hopkins University and co-investigator on Dragonfly’s science team. “That’s why Titan is exciting. It’s a natural version of our origin-of-life experiments — except it’s been running much longer and on a planetary scale.”
For decades, scientists have simulated Earth’s early conditions, mixing water with simple organics to create a “prebiotic soup” and jumpstarting reactions with an electrical shock. The problem is time. Most tests last weeks, maybe months or years.
The melt pools at Selk crater, however, possibly lasted tens of thousands of years. Still shorter than the hundreds of millions of years it took life to emerge on Earth, but potentially enough time for critical chemistry to occur.
“We don’t know if Earth life took so long because conditions had to stabilize or because the chemistry itself needed time,” Hörst said. “But models show that if you toss Titan’s organics into water, tens of thousands of years is plenty of time for chemistry to happen.”
Dragonfly will test that theory. Landing near Selk, it will fly from site to site, analyzing the surface chemistry to investigate the frozen remains of what could have been prebiotic chemistry in action.
Morgan Cable, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and co-investigator on Dragonfly, is particularly excited about the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS) instrument. Developed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with a key subsystem provided by the CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), DraMS will search for indicators of complex chemistry.
“We’re not looking for exact molecules, but patterns that suggest complexity,” Cable said. On Earth, for example, amino acids — fundamental to proteins — appear in specific patterns. A world without life would mainly manufacture the simplest amino acids and form fewer complex ones.
Generally, Titan isn’t regarded as habitable; it’s too cold for the chemistry of life as we know it to occur, and there’s is no liquid water on the surface, where the organics and likely energy sources exist.
Still, scientists have assumed that if a place has life’s ingredients and enough time, complex chemistry — and eventually life — should emerge. If Titan proves otherwise, it may mean we’ve misunderstood something about life’s start and it may be rarer than we thought.
“We won’t know how easy or difficult it is for these chemical steps to occur if we don’t go, so we need to go and look,” Cable said. “That’s the fun thing about going to a world like Titan. We’re like detectives with our magnifying glasses, looking at everything and wondering what this is.”
Dragonfly is being designed and built under the direction of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which manages the mission for NASA. The team includes key partners at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dragonfly is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
For more information on Dragonfly, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/dragonfly/
By Jeremy Rehm
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
Media Contacts:
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Mike Buckley
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
443-567-3145
michael.buckley@jhuapl.edu
Saturn
Saturn Moons
Our Solar System
Asteroids, Comets & Meteors
Winners Announced in NASA’s 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) A team from South Dakota State University with their project, “Soil Testing and Plant Leaf Extraction Drone,” took first place at the 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Forum held May 20-21 in Palmdale, California. Advisor Todd Lechter, left, along with team members Nick Wolles, Keegan Visher, Nathan Kuehl and Laura Peterson, and graduate advisor Allea Klauenberg, right, accepted the award.NASA
A team from South Dakota State University, with their project titled “Soil Testing and Plant Leaf Extraction Drone” took first place at the 2025 NASA Gateways to Blue Skies Competition, which challenged student teams to research aviation solutions to support U.S. agriculture.
The winning project proposed a drone-based soil and tissue sampling process that would automate a typically labor-intensive farming task. The South Dakota State team competed among eight finalists at the 2025 Blue Skies Forum May 20-21 in Palmdale, California, near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. Subject matter experts from NASA and industry served as judges.
“This competition challenges students to think creatively, explore new possibilities, and confront the emerging issues and opportunity spaces solvable through aviation platforms,” said Steven Holz, assistant project manager for University Innovation with NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and Blue Skies judge and co-chair. “They bring imaginative ideas, interesting insights, and an impressive level of dedication. It’s always an honor to work with the next generation of innovators participating in our competition.”
This competition challenges students to think creatively, explore new possibilities, and confront the emerging issues and opportunity spaces solvable through aviation platformsSteven holz
Assistant Project Manager for University Innovation
The winning team members were awarded an opportunity to intern during the 2025-26 academic year at any of four aeronautics-focused NASA centers — Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, or Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
“It’s been super-rewarding for our team to see how far we’ve come, especially with all these other amazing projects that we were competing against,” said Nathan Kuehl, team lead at South Dakota State University. “It wouldn’t have been possible without our graduate advisor, Allea Klauenberg, and advisor, Todd Lechter. We want to thank everybody that made this experience possible.”
Other awards included:
- Second Place — University of Tulsa, CattleLog Cattle Management System
- Best Technical Paper — Boston University, PLAANT: Precision Land Analysis and Aerial Nitrogen Treatment
Sponsored by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, this year’s competition asked teams of university students to research new or improved aviation solutions to support agriculture that could be applied by 2035 or sooner. The goal of the competition, titled AgAir: Aviation Solutions for Agriculture, was to enhance production, efficiency, sustainability, and resilience to extreme weather.
At the forum, finalist teams presented concepts of aviation systems that could help the agriculture industry.Students had the opportunity to meet with NASA and industry experts, tour NASA Armstrong, and gain insight into the agency’s aviation mission.
U.S. agriculture provides food, fuel, and fiber to the nation and the world. However, the industry faces significant challenges. NASA Aeronautics is committed to supporting commercial, industrial, and governmental partners in advancing aviation systems to modernize agricultural capabilities.
The Gateways to Blue Skies competition is sponsored by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s University Innovation Project and is managed by the National Institute of Aerospace.
The National Institute of Aerospace has made available a livestream of the competition, as well as information about the finalists and their projects, and details about the 2025 competition.
Facebook logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASAes @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Instagram logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Linkedin logo @NASA Explore More 3 min read NASA’s Moffett Federal Airfield Hosts Boeing Digital Taxi Tests Article 15 hours ago 5 min read NASA X-59’s Latest Testing Milestone: Simulating Flight from the Ground Article 7 days ago 4 min read Top Prize Awarded in Lunar Autonomy Challenge to Virtually Map Moon’s Surface Article 1 week ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASAAeronautics
Aeronautics STEM
Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program
NASA History
Share Details Last Updated May 22, 2025 EditorLillian GipsonContactRobert Margettarobert.j.margetta@nasa.gov Related TermsWinners Announced in NASA’s 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) A team from South Dakota State University with their project, “Soil Testing and Plant Leaf Extraction Drone,” took first place at the 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Forum held May 20-21 in Palmdale, California. Advisor Todd Lechter, left, along with team members Nick Wolles, Keegan Visher, Nathan Kuehl and Laura Peterson, and graduate advisor Allea Klauenberg, right, accepted the award.NASAA team from South Dakota State University, with their project titled “Soil Testing and Plant Leaf Extraction Drone” took first place at the 2025 NASA Gateways to Blue Skies Competition, which challenged student teams to research aviation solutions to support U.S. agriculture.
The winning project proposed a drone-based soil and tissue sampling process that would automate a typically labor-intensive farming task. The South Dakota State team competed among eight finalists at the 2025 Blue Skies Forum May 20-21 in Palmdale, California, near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. Subject matter experts from NASA and industry served as judges.
“This competition challenges students to think creatively, explore new possibilities, and confront the emerging issues and opportunity spaces solvable through aviation platforms,” said Steven Holz, assistant project manager for University Innovation with NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and Blue Skies judge and co-chair. “They bring imaginative ideas, interesting insights, and an impressive level of dedication. It’s always an honor to work with the next generation of innovators participating in our competition.”
This competition challenges students to think creatively, explore new possibilities, and confront the emerging issues and opportunity spaces solvable through aviation platformsSteven holz
Assistant Project Manager for University Innovation
The winning team members were awarded an opportunity to intern during the 2025-26 academic year at any of four aeronautics-focused NASA centers — Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, or Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
“It’s been super-rewarding for our team to see how far we’ve come, especially with all these other amazing projects that we were competing against,” said Nathan Kuehl, team lead at South Dakota State University. “It wouldn’t have been possible without our graduate advisor, Allea Klauenberg, and advisor, Todd Lechter. We want to thank everybody that made this experience possible.”
Other awards included:
- Second Place — University of Tulsa, CattleLog Cattle Management System
- Best Technical Paper — Boston University, PLAANT: Precision Land Analysis and Aerial Nitrogen Treatment
Sponsored by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, this year’s competition asked teams of university students to research new or improved aviation solutions to support agriculture that could be applied by 2035 or sooner. The goal of the competition, titled AgAir: Aviation Solutions for Agriculture, was to enhance production, efficiency, sustainability, and resilience to extreme weather.
At the forum, finalist teams presented concepts of aviation systems that could help the agriculture industry.Students had the opportunity to meet with NASA and industry experts, tour NASA Armstrong, and gain insight into the agency’s aviation mission.
U.S. agriculture provides food, fuel, and fiber to the nation and the world. However, the industry faces significant challenges. NASA Aeronautics is committed to supporting commercial, industrial, and governmental partners in advancing aviation systems to modernize agricultural capabilities.
The Gateways to Blue Skies competition is sponsored by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s University Innovation Project and is managed by the National Institute of Aerospace.
The National Institute of Aerospace has made available a livestream of the competition, as well as information about the finalists and their projects, and details about the 2025 competition.
Facebook logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASAes @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Instagram logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Linkedin logo @NASA Explore More 3 min read NASA’s Moffett Federal Airfield Hosts Boeing Digital Taxi Tests Article 7 hours ago 5 min read NASA X-59’s Latest Testing Milestone: Simulating Flight from the Ground Article 7 days ago 4 min read Top Prize Awarded in Lunar Autonomy Challenge to Virtually Map Moon’s Surface Article 1 week ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASAAeronautics
Aeronautics STEM
Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program
NASA History
Share Details Last Updated May 22, 2025 EditorLillian GipsonContactRobert Margettarobert.j.margetta@nasa.gov Related TermsVirgin Galactic on track to start launching customers again in 2026, but seat prices will rise
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How Much Ultraprocessed Food Do You Eat? Blood and Urine Record It
A new study suggests blood and urine samples could provide an objective measure of diets and help unravel their connections to disease
Mapping the Center of the Milky Way in 3D
The Solar System is a whopping 26,000 light-years from the heart of the Milky Way, where a mysterious and dense region—shrouded in thick gas and dust—holds one of the Galaxy’s most active zones: the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ). A team of scientists have unleashed a cutting-edge 3D model of this region, mapping out everything from massive molecular clouds to young stars in the making. Armed with powerful radio telescopes and infrared observatories, they’ve pieced together a detailed map, offering a rare glimpse into the heart of our Galaxy’s chaotic core.
The Location of a Galaxy's Gas Plays a Role in Star Formation
Galaxies are stellar factories generating stars at different speeds—some working at a breakneck pace while others trickling along! We have known for a long time that the availability of raw materials makes a difference to stellar formation, but according to a new paper which surveyed 1,000 galaxies the location of the matter plays a role too. Those with a high stellar formation rate seem to have a high volume of gas reserves in the heart of their densest star clusters with the highest concentration of stars.