NASA’s planned Dragonfly mission will carry names submitted by the public to Saturn’s moon Titan on an onboard chip, with arrival expected in late 2034.
Under the “Journey to Titan” campaign, NASA will add the names to a microchip aboard the spacecraft and provide participants with personalized digital boarding passes. The agency announced the effort Thursday, Oct. 29, and directs people to its Dragonfly name-submission page.
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which leads the mission for NASA, is assembling and testing the spacecraft in Laurel, Maryland, APL said in its announcement. NASA’s mission page lists launch as no earlier than July 2028, with arrival at Titan in late 2034. The campaign announcement gives the broader schedule as 2028 and 2034.
Dragonfly is designed to fly among multiple sites on Titan and investigate the moon’s varied environments. NASA says the mission will look for clues about habitability and study prebiotic chemistry — chemical processes that predate biology.
NASA describes Titan as a world with a dense atmosphere, rivers and lakes of liquid methane, sweeping dunes and terrain rich in organic material. The agency says Dragonfly will be the first science mission to combine flight with exploration of another world’s surface, as well as its first rotorcraft science mission. Dragonfly is the fourth mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, and NASA lists Elizabeth Turtle of APL as the principal investigator.
Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said the campaign would “bring humanity along for the journey of a lifetime.” Entries close at 11:59 p.m. EST Jan. 15, 2027.
