And there is already a robotic Titan mission on the books \u2014 NASA’s nuclear-powered Dragonfly<\/a> octocopter mission, which is targeted to launch in 2028. Could it help fuel a human leap?<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \n A NASA image of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. (Image credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech)Foundational talks<\/p>\n “It’s not too soon to begin thinking about this,” said Amanda Hendrix, director of the Planetary Science Institute, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. She is also president of the advocacy group Explore Titan<\/a> and co-author of “Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets” (Pantheon Books, 2016).<\/p>\n “The idea of the summit is to bring together people from different communities \u2014 engineers, scientists, industry, academia, robotic and human spaceflight experts,” Hendrix told Space.com. “We’re having foundational talks about what precursor missions do we need in order to get us on the road to Titan, eventually with humans.”<\/p>\n Hendrix noted that, after Apollo<\/a>‘s last human foray to the moon in 1972<\/a>, there was a gap of decades, a lull in launching astronauts beyond Earth orbit \u2014 a pause just filled by NASA’s recent Artemis 2<\/a> mission, which sent four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth.<\/p>\n “Now we are, hopefully, back on track [with] humans going to the moon<\/a>, with NASA talking about Mars<\/a> as the next human destination,” said Hendrix. “I think having a concept in our mind after Mars can guide our thinking, give us a path and keep us motivated for the future.”<\/p>\n Visits, past and future<\/p>\n The Saturn moon has had visitors already. On Jan. 14, 2005, the European Space Agency<\/a>‘s robotic Huygens probe \u2014 part of the NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn \u2014 touched down on Titan<\/a>.<\/p>\n Making a 2.5-hour descent through Titan’s atmosphere, the Huygens probe provided a stream of data for 72 minutes once on the moon’s surface. It set the still-standing record as the most distant landing from Earth.<\/p>\n “Huygens showed us many things,” Hendrix said. She cited the dynamics of Titan’s atmosphere, the look of its surface \u2014 which features water-ice “rocks,” dry river beds, lakes and dunes \u2014 as well as the overall haziness at the landing locale.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n “It does look otherworldly,” Hendrix said.<\/p>\n Next up for Titan is Dragonfly, now scheduled to launch no earlier than 2028 for a six-year voyage to Titan. Once landed, the craft will spend three years flying from spot to spot to investigate a range of sites, perhaps revealing its potential to host life<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n A set of images taken by Europe\u2019s Huygens probe during its landing on Titan in January 2005, showing the view from an altitude of 1.2 miles (2 kilometers). It is in Mercator projection, so the N-S\/E-W directions cross at right angles but surface areas appear distorted. (Image credit: ESA\/NASA\/JPL\/University of Arizona)A dynamic world<\/p>\n “Dragonfly is an awesome, super-important mission to a fascinating and active world,” said Hendrix. “Titan is not a static place. It is a dynamic world,” she said, “probably a place that’s very close to an early-Earth kind of environment.”<\/p>\n Dragonfly will give us a leg up in the effort to send humans to Titan, Hendrix said, “but there’s still a lot to do and learn.”<\/p>\n “Ultimately, we’re trying to get humans on the surface and living there. I think that’s doable in the long-term, for sure,” she said. A precursor mission might involve robotic orbiting of Titan \u2014 perhaps even a human crew circuiting the Saturn moon. Radar and infrared scanning of its surface could be done, she said, along with gauging what impact Titan’s changing seasons have on the moon’s atmosphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n “A lot can be done, and should be done, robotically. But with humans on the surface, there’s work only humans can do,” Hendrix said.<\/p>\n Surmountable issues<\/p>\n So, how best to strut the right stuff on Titan?<\/p>\n First, there’s more atmospheric pressure than here on Earth<\/a>. “You don’t need a pressure suit like you do on the moon or Mars. What you do need to do is keep warm. It’s very cold there. There’s also a little more gravity than the Earth’s moon,” said Hendrix.<\/p>\n Because of Titan’s atmosphere, “you can strap wings to your arms and move through the atmosphere under your own power, or strap on a jet pack and power yourself around. You’ve got that atmosphere and low gravity. There are many options for transport on Titan, which Dragonfly is taking advantage of,” Hendrix said.<\/p>\n Also, you’d have to make your own oxygen, Hendrix said, which is not available in Titan’s thick, nitrogen atmosphere laced with methane. A Titan-based habitat would need a power source. And, given the precipitation of molecules and gunk that rains down and settles on the surface, there’s a need to protect equipment, she said.<\/p>\n “This is all surmountable,” said Hendrix, saying that Dragonfly and other precursor missions could yield information useful for human visits to Titan.<\/p>\n The Humans to Titan Summit 2026 is being held June 11-12 in Boulder, Colorado. The goal is “to explore the concept of Titan as the next human exploration destination after Mars, how it could be done and what we would need to do now,” according to the event’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n “We want the workshop to invigorate the community to think about what we need to do and what the possibilities are \u2026 to plant the seed that this is a real possibility,” Hendrix concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After “re-booting” the moon and establishing a base there, followed by dispatching expeditionary crews to Mars, where should…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":779900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-779899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116533985905514939","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ZNfCHLnCUofSdXcZCmuCdd.png\")
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