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		</div><p>Nasa will send a spacecraft to explore the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan and search for “the building blocks of life”, the space agency has revealed.</p>
<p>The Dragonfly mission, part of Nasa’s New Frontiers programme, will launch in 2026 and arrive at Titan in 2034.</p>
<p>It marks the first time Nasa will fly a multi-rotor driven vehicle for science on another planet.</p>
<p>Announcing the mission, Jim Bridenstine, Nasa administrator, said the space agency was “pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and expanding the limits of technology”.</p>
<p>He added: “Dragonfly will be the first drone lander with the capability to fly over 100 miles through Titan’s thick atmosphere.</p>
<p>“Titan is unlike any other place in our solar system and the most comparable to early Earth.</p>
<p>“The instruments on board will help us investigate organic chemistry, evaluate habitability and search for chemical signatures of past or even present life.</p>
<p>“This revolutionary mission would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago.”</p>
<p>According to Nasa, Titan is a “unique, richly organic world”, which could provide clues as to how life arose on Earth.</p>
<p>Larger than the planet Mercury, it is the second largest moon in the solar system, and is about 886 million miles away from the Sun.</p>
<p>Its surface temperature is around -179 degrees Celsius, with a surface pressure 50% higher than Earth’s.</p>
<blockquote><p>It’s remarkable to think of this rotorcraft flying miles and miles across the organic sand dunes of Saturn’s largest moon.</p></blockquote>
<p>Dragonfly, which has eight rotors and flies like a large drone, will explore a range of environments on Titan.</p>
<p>The moon has a nitrogen-based atmosphere like Earth, but unlike our planet also has clouds and rain of methane.</p>
<p>According to Nasa, Titan’s weather and surface processes have complex organics, energy and water similar to those that may have kick-started life on Earth.</p>
<p>Dragonfly’s instruments will search for chemical evidence of past or existing life on the moon.</p>
<p>Thomas Zurbuchen, Nasa’s associate administrator for science, said: “Titan is unlike any other place in the solar system, and Dragonfly is like no other mission.</p>
<p>“It’s remarkable to think of this rotorcraft flying miles and miles across the organic sand dunes of Saturn’s largest moon, exploring the processes that shape this extraordinary environment.</p>
<p>“Dragonfly will visit a world filled with a wide variety of organic compounds, which are the building blocks of life and could teach us about the origin of life itself.”</p>
<p>Nasa said Dragonfly will first land on Titan’s “Shangri-La” dune fields, similar to those in Namibia in southern Africa, making short flights around the region and collecting samples, before progressing to the Selk impact crater.</p>
<p>The lander will eventually fly more than 108 miles, nearly double the distance travelled to date by all the Mars rovers combined.</p>
<p>Dragonfly is the latest in a series of missions under the New Frontiers programme, following on from the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, the Juno mission to Jupiter and the OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu.</p>
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