The NASA-SpaceX launch to Titan sparks dreams of colonization

Recently, NASA selected the SpaceX Falcon Heavy to launch the Dragonfly aerial probe to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. 

The selection constitutes another win for Elon Musk’s launch company. It also proves SpaceX’s growing contribution to NASA’s planetary science-oriented missions to destinations such as Europa, a moon of Jupiter (launched in October) and to 16 Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid (launched in 2023).

NASA chose the Falcon Heavy because it would be able to reduce the time Dragonfly would take to get to Titan, making up for time lost developing the mission because of the COVID epidemic and other reasons. The fixed-price contract involves NASA paying SpaceX $256.6 million for launch services and other related costs.

SpaceX, with its relentless drive to make space launches cheaper and more reliable has made the Artemis return to the moon program possible. Likewise, the Falcon family of rockets is benefiting planetary missions as well. Aside from the Dragonfly, Falcon Heavy is slated to launch the Astrobotic Griffin 1 and Griffin 2 missions to the moon and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

The Dragonfly mission to Titan will be one of the most fascinating, technically challenging undertakings that any space agency has attempted. The Dragonfly is a nuclear-powered car-sized rotorcraft. It is scheduled to land on Titan in 2034, after a six-year voyage.

The Dragonfly will fly from place to place on the surface of Titan using eight rotor blades as a vertical takeoff and landing drone. It will use a suite of instruments, including cameras, to examine one of the most enigmatic celestial bodies in the solar system.

Ever since Titan was discovered by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens in 1655, the moon has been shrouded in mystery — in part because it is literally shrouded in a thick atmosphere of methane and nitrogen. That mystery changed in 2005 when the Cassini space probe arrived in orbit around Saturn and detached the Huygens lander, built by the European Space Agency, which penetrated Titan’s atmosphere for the first time.

The Huygens probe found a world remarkably similar to Earth and yet totally unlike our home planet as well. Like Earth, Titan has a hydraulic cycle in which bodies of fluid evaporate, condense as clouds, and then rain back to the surface. Unlike Earth, Titan has lakes, rivers and streams of liquid methane and ethane instead of water.

Huygens touched down on an orange plain littered with pebbles composed of water ice. The probe was able to return data throughout the descent and for 72 minutes after landing before losing contact.

Dragonfly will be the second aircraft to fly in the skies of an alien world since the Mars Ingenuity. It will examine conditions on the surface and in the atmosphere of Titan more thoroughly than any other space probe. It might even find a form of life in the hydrocarbon soup of Saturn’s moon, although it would have to be of a type hitherto never seen before.

What comes next after Dragonfly? Science journalist Charles Wohlford and planetary scientist Amanda Hendrix have some ideas.

Wohlford and Hendrix suggest colonizing Titan. The idea seems crazy at first glance, but it turns out that the moon of Saturn has certain advantages for future space colonists not present on the moon or Mars.

Titan has a thick enough atmosphere that future colonists will not have to wear pressure suits while on its surface. Its atmosphere and Saturn’s magnetosphere provide some protection from radiation. Titan is filled with resources, including water ice as well as methane, to provide consumables and energy. Titan colonists could make plastic from local resources to build habitats.

On the other hand, Titan is incredibly cold, at negative 291 degrees Fahrenheit. With current technology, it takes seven to eight years to get there.

The colonization of Titan is not likely to happen for many decades or even within the current century. NASA is focused on the moon and Mars as destinations to send astronauts. SpaceX’s Elon Musk dreams of founding a city on Mars, a destination months away and not years.

Still, if experience has taught us anything, science fiction tends to become reality, sometimes quicker than we imagine. Children growing up today may live to see, in their old age, settlers braving the cold and deadly conditions of the strangest of new worlds, like Titan.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and, most recently, “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.