Sat, Nov 20
|Dragonfly: Exploring an Organic-Rich Moon
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Dr. Melissa Trainer-Dragonfly: Exploring an Organic-Rich Moon
Dr. Melissa Trainer presents the Dragonfly dual quad-copter Mission to Saturn's Moon Titan
Time & Location
Nov 20, 2021, 7:00 PM EST
Dragonfly: Exploring an Organic-Rich Moon
About the event
Image credit: NASA
Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4911142455?pwd=VzJXUVdydDRoeHdoaU83REkrQ1M2Zz09
Meeting ID: 491 114 2455
Password: 2MFe1n
NO NEED TO REGISTER
Introducing Dragonfly: our next New Frontiers Mission! Making multiple flights, the Dragonfly dual-quadcopter will explore a variety of locations on Saturn's moon Titan. Titan is an analog to the very early Earth, and can provide clues to how life may have arisen on our planet. In under an hour, Dragonfly will cover tens of miles or kilometers, farther than any planetary rover has traveled. With one hop per full Titan day (16 Earth days), the rotorcraft will travel from its initial landing site to cover areas several hundred kilometers away during the planned two-year mission. Despite its unique ability to fly, Dragonfly would spend most of its time on Titan's surface making science measurements.
NASA Goddard’s Melissa Trainer will serve as one of two deputy principal investigators on the mission.
Dr. Melissa Trainer is a Deputy Principal Investigator (PI) for the Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan, part of the NASA Planetary Science New Frontiers Program. Dr. Trainer is also the lead for the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), an instrument supporting the Dragonfly investigation of Titan's surface composition and characterization of potential prebiotic chemistry. Dr. Trainer is also a Co-Investigator and the Deputy Lead for the Venus Mass Spectrometer on the DAVINCI+ mission to Venus.
Dr. Trainer has been a Research Space Scientist in the Planetary Environments Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center since 2009. Her research interests include the composition of planetary atmospheres and the production of organic molecules and aerosols via atmospheric synthesis.
Dr. Trainer has spent more than a decade characterizing the properties of Titan and early Earth aerosol analogs. Her publications on this topic include chemical, optical, and isotopic characterizations of these analogs produced via electric discharge and photochemical irradiation, with recent emphasis on the elemental composition, nitrogen activation, and the influence of trace species such as benzene.