It will finally reach the Selk impact crater, where there is evidence of past liquid water and organics - the complex carbon-based molecules that are vital for life. These may have existed together for tens of thousands of years.
"What really excites me about this mission is that Titan has all of the key ingredients needed for life," said Dr Lori Glaze, the director of planetary science at Nasa. "Liquid water and liquid methane. We have the complex organic carbon-based molecules. And we have the energy that we know is required for life.
"So we have on Titan opportunity to observe the processes that were present on early Earth when life began to form and possibly even conditions that may be able to harbour life today."
In addition to studying this "pre-biotic chemistry", Dragonfly carries instruments that can investigate the moon's atmosphere and the water-ammonia ocean thought to lie beneath its surface. It will also search for chemical evidence of past or present life.
"With the Dragonfly mission, Nasa will once again do what no-one else can do," said the US space agency's administrator, Jim Bridenstine.
"Visiting this mysterious ocean world could revolutionise what we know about life in the Universe. This cutting-edge mission would have been unthinkable even just a few years ago, but we're now ready for Dragonfly's amazing flight."
The lander could eventually fly more than 175km (108 miles) - nearly double the distance travelled to date by all Mars rovers combined.
Dragonfly will be powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG), which converts the heat released by the decay of a radioactive material into electricity. While there is enough sunlight at Titan's surface to see, there is not enough to use solar power efficiently. |
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