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Picture a world
with a variety of landforms.
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It has a dense atmosphere
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within which winds
sweep across its surface
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and rain falls.
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It has mountains and plains,
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rivers, lakes and seas,
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sand dunes
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and some impact craters.
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Sounds like Earth, right?
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This is Titan.
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In August 1981,
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Voyager 2 captured this image
of Saturn's largest moon.
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the Voyager missions have traveled
farther than ever before,
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making the Solar System and beyond
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part of our geography.
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But this image, this hazy moon
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was a stark reminder
of just how much mystery remained.
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We learned an exponential amount
as the Voyagers flew by it,
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and yet we had no idea what lay beneath
this atmospheric blanket.
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Was there an icy surface with landforms
like those of the other moons
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that had been observed
at Saturn and Jupiter?
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Or perhaps simply a vast
global ocean of liquid methane?
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Shrouded by the obscuring haze,
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Titan's surface was a huge
outstanding mystery.
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that Cassini-Huygens,
an orbiter lander pair launched in 1997,
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was designed to solve.
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After arrival in 2004,
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the early images Cassini sent back
of Titan's surface
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only heightened the allure.
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It took months for us to understand
what we were seeing on the surface,
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to determine, for example,
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that the dark stripes,
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which were initially so unrecognizable
that we referred to them as cat scratches,
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were actually dunes made of organic sand.
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Over the course of the 13 years
that Cassini sent studying Saturn
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and its rings and moons,
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we had the privilege
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of going from knowing almost nothing
about the surface of Titan
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to understanding its geology
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the role the atmosphere plays
in shaping its surface,
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and even hints of what lies
deep beneath that surface.
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Indeed, Titan is one
of several ocean worlds,
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moons in the cold outer Solar System
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beyond the orbits of Mars
and the Asteroid Belt
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with immense liquid water oceans
beneath their surfaces.
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Titan's interior ocean may have
more than 10 times as much liquid water
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as all of the Earth's rivers, lakes,
seas and oceans combined.
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And at Titan, there are also
exotic lakes and seas
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of liquid methane and ethane
on the surface.
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Ocean worlds are some of
the most fascinating places
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in the Solar System,
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and we have only
just begun to explore them.
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This is Dragonfly.
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At the Johns Hopkins
Applied Physics Laboratory,
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we're building this mission
for NASA's new Frontiers program.
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Scheduled to launch in 2026
and reach Titan in 2034,
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Dragonfly is a rotorcraft lander,
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similar in size to the Mars rovers
or about the size of a small car.
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Titan's dense atmosphere,
combined with its low gravity,
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make it a great place to fly,
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and that's exactly what Dragonfly
is designed to do.
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Technically an octocopter,
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Dragonfly is a mobile laboratory
that can fly from place to place
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taking all of its scientific
instruments with it.
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Dragonfly will investigate Titan
in a truly unique way,
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studying details
of its weather and geology
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and even picking up samples
from the surface
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to learn what they're made of.
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All told, Dragonfly will spend
about three years exploring Titan,
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measuring its detailed chemistry,
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observing the atmosphere
and how it interacts with the surface,
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and even listening for earthquakes,
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or technically titanquakes,
in Titan's crust.
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The Dragonfly team,
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hundreds of people across
North America and around the world,
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is hard at work on
the design for this mission,
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developing the rotorcraft,
its autonomous navigation system,
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and its instrumentation,
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all of which will need to work together
to make science measurements
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on the surface of Titan.
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Dragonfly is the next step
in our exploration
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of this fascinating natural laboratory.
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In flying by, Voyager hinted
at the possibilities.
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In orbiting Saturn for over a decade
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and descending through Titan's atmosphere,
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Cassini and Huygens pulled
Titan's veil back a bit further.
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Dragonfly will live the Titan environment,
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where, so far, our only close-up view
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is this image the Huygens probe
took in January 2005.
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In many ways, Titan is the closest
known analogue we have to the early Earth,
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the Earth before life developed here.
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From Cassini-Huygens' measurements,
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we know that the ingredients for life,
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at least life as we know it,
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have existed on Titan,
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and Dragonfly will be fully immersed
within this alien environment,
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looking for compounds similar to those
that might have supported
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the development of life here on Earth
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and teaching us about
the habitability of other worlds.
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Habitability is a fascinating concept.
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What's necessary to make
an environment suitable to host life,
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whether life as we know it here on Earth,
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or perhaps exotic life that has developed
under very different conditions?
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The possibility of life elsewhere
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has inspired human imagination
and exploration throughout history.
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On a grand scale,
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it's why the ocean worlds
in the outer Solar System
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have become such
important targets for study.
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It's the "what if"
that drives human exploration.
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We don't know how chemistry
took the step to biology here on Earth,
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but similar chemical processes
may have happened on Titan,
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where organic molecules
have had the opportunity
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to mix with liquid water at the surface.
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Has organic synthesis progressed
under these conditions?
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And if so, how far?
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We don't know, yet.
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What we will learn from Dragonfly,
this fundamentally human endeavor,
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is tantalizing.
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It's a search for building blocks,
foundations, chemical steps
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like those that ultimately
led to life on Earth.
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We're not sure exactly
what we will find when we get to Titan,
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but that's exactly why we're going.
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In 1994, Carl Sagan wrote,
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"On Titan, the molecules
that have been raining down
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like manna from heaven
for the last four billion years
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might still be there,
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largely unaltered, deep frozen,
awaiting the chemists from Earth."
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We are those chemists.
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Dragonfly is a search
for greater understanding,
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not just of Titan and the mysteries
of our Solar System,
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but of our own origins.
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Thank you.