The Latest Update on America's Next Saturn-bound Robotic Explorer...

NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Ed Whitman

NASA’s Dragonfly Rotorcraft Gets Decked Out, Tested (News Release)

NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft is beginning to take shape – literally – with the delivery of the panels that make up the rotorcraft lander’s body. Built from ultra‑lightweight honeycomb panels designed at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, the primary structure is specially designed for the challenges of flight on Saturn’s largest moon Titan.

Each panel uses aluminum face sheets only 0.01 inches thick — much thinner than typically used on spacecraft — to meet the strict mass limits required for powered flight through Titan’s atmosphere. But while the entire frame weighs just 230 pounds, it’s also durable. “The structure is remarkably light and yet strong enough to withstand the intense forces of launch and the entry into Titan’s atmosphere,” said Gordon Maahs, the Dragonfly mechanical systems engineer from APL. “We’ve never built anything like it.”

In early April, the APL team began assembling the fuselage and integrating key structural elements, including the mounting plate and cover for Dragonfly’s power source, a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which will be installed just before launch. Engineers also performed a fit check of the top deck, which carries components of Dragonfly’s telecommunications system.

In May, vibration and static-load tests will be performed on the structure to measure Dragonfly’s response to the dynamic forces of launch (from Earth) and atmospheric entry and landing (on Titan). “The lander is starting to look like Dragonfly,” said Hunter Reeling, Dragonfly’s thermal mechanical integration and test lead from APL. “We’re excited to see the designs coming to life.”

Parachute passes test

In February, the mission achieved a significant milestone with the successful completion of another series of parachute drop tests, key to the development of the parachute decelerator elements of the entry, descent and landing (EDL) system that will decelerate the Dragonfly lander as it descends into Titan’s atmosphere.

Led by Airborne Systems of Santa Ana, California, in coordination with NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and conducted in Eloy, Arizona, the test marked the first trials of a full-scale parachute system, including both the drogue and main parachutes. These tests on Earth are designed to closely replicate the environment that Dragonfly will encounter within Titan’s atmosphere.

The team plans to conduct another series of similar design-qualification tests in October before building the flight systems.

Preparing to sample Titan’s surface

Dragonfly’s portable chemistry lab, which will study Titan’s surface composition, is in the final stages of integration and testing at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This payload, called the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), includes two systems for releasing molecules from samples that Dragonfly will collect: laser desorption and gas chromatography. Once released, the molecules will flow to a mass spectrometer, which will identify them by their masses.

On April 15, engineers completed testing of the laser system, which was integrated within DraMS in February. Using a sample with known compounds, the team confirmed that the laser and mass spectrometer can identify the chemicals in a relevant sample, even in very small amounts.

Over the next few weeks, engineers will install the gas chromatography system into DraMS and carry out similar tests. The gas chromatography system, provided by CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), works by heating a sample, releasing molecules, and separating them before analysis. Together, the laser- and gas-analysis systems will help Dragonfly detect compounds across a wide range of sizes.

Dragonfly is scheduled to launch no earlier than 2028 for a six-year voyage to Saturn’s moon Titan, where it will spend three years flying from location to location to explore a range of sites to study the chemistry, geology, and atmosphere of the Earthlike moon and ultimately advance our understanding of life’s chemical origins.

Source: NASA.Gov

****


Airborne Systems North America

New Dragonfly hardware! Last week, leaders from NASA visited our facilities to see the aeroshell and fuel tanks for @NASASolarSystem's Dragonfly, a partnership w/@JHUAPL.

These technologies are critical for the nuclear-powered rotorcraft to safely get to Saturn's moon, Titan. pic.twitter.com/RmKeGVmWti

— Lockheed Martin Space (@LMSpace) April 20, 2026

The Latest Discovery in the Search for Life on the Red Planet...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / MSSS

NASA’s Curiosity Finds Organic Molecules Never Seen Before on Mars (News Release)

After years of lab work, the results are in: A rock that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drilled and analyzed in 2020 includes the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on the Red Planet. Of the 21 carbon-containing molecules identified in the sample, seven of them were detected for the first time on Mars.

Scientists have no way of knowing whether these organic molecules were created by biologic or geologic processes — either path is possible — but their discovery renewed confirmation that ancient Mars had the right chemistry to support life. What’s more, the molecules join a growing list of compounds known to be preserved in rocks even after billions of years of exposure on Mars to radiation, which can break down these molecules over time.

The findings are detailed in a new paper published on Tuesday in Nature Communications.

The rock sample, nicknamed “Mary Anning 3” after an English fossil collector and paleontologist, was collected on a part of Mount Sharp covered by lakes and streams billions of years ago. This oasis surged and dried up multiple times in the planet’s ancient past, eventually enriching the area with clay minerals, which are especially good at preserving organic compounds — carbon-containing molecules that are the building blocks of life and are found throughout the Solar System.

Among the newly-identified molecules is a nitrogen heterocycle, a ring of carbon atoms that includes nitrogen. This kind of molecular structure is considered a predecessor to RNA and DNA, two nucleic acids that are key to genetic information.

“That detection is pretty profound because these structures can be chemical precursors to more complex nitrogen-bearing molecules,” said the paper’s lead author, Amy Williams of the University of Florida in Gainesville. “Nitrogen heterorcycles have never been found before on the Martian surface or confirmed in Martian meteorites.”

Another exciting discovery was benzothiophene, a carbon- and sulfur-bearing molecule that’s been found in many meteorites. These meteorites, along with the organic molecules within them, are thought by some scientists to have seeded prebiotic chemistry across the early Solar System.

Martian chemistry

The new paper complements last year’s finding of the largest organic molecules ever discovered on Mars: long-chain hydrocarbons, including decane, undecane and dodecane.

“This is Curiosity and our team at their best. It took dozens of scientists and engineers to locate this site, drill the sample, and make these discoveries with our awesome robot,” said the mission’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “This collection of organic molecules once again increases the prospect that Mars offered a home for life in the ancient past.”

Both sets of findings were made with a sophisticated minilab called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), located in Curiosity’s belly. A drill on the end of the rover’s robotic arm pulverizes a carefully selected rock sample into powder and then trickles it into SAM, where a high-temperature oven heats the material, releasing gases that instruments in the lab analyze to reveal the rock’s composition.

In addition, SAM can perform “wet chemistry,” dropping samples into a small cup of solvent. The resulting reactions can break apart larger molecules that would be difficult to detect and identify otherwise. While the instrument has several such cups, only two contain tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH), a powerful solution reserved for the highest-value samples.

The Mary Anning 3 sample was the first to be exposed to TMAH.

To verify TMAH’s reactions with otherworldly materials, the paper’s authors also tested the technique on Earth with a piece of the Murchison meteorite, one of the most studied meteorites of all time. More than 4 billion years old, Murchison contains organic molecules that were seeded throughout the early Solar System. A Murchison sample exposed to TMAH was found to break much larger molecules into some of the ones seen in Mary Anning 3, including benzothiophene.

That result verifies that the Martian molecules found in Mary Anning 3 could have been generated from the breakdown of even more complex compounds relevant to life.

Curiosity recently used its second and final TMAH cup while exploring weblike boxwork ridges, which were formed by ancient groundwater. The mission team will be analyzing those results for a future peer-reviewed paper.

Trailblazing for future missions

Built by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, SAM is based on larger, commercial-grade lab instruments. Getting such complex equipment into the rover required engineers to dramatically shrink it down and develop a way for it to run on less power. Scientists had to learn how to heat up SAM’s oven more slowly over longer periods in order to conduct some of these experiments.

“It was a feat just figuring out how to conduct this kind of chemistry for the first time on Mars,” said Charles Malespin, the instrument’s principal investigator at NASA Goddard and a study coauthor. “But now that we’ve had some practice, we’re prepared to run similar experiments on future missions.”

In fact, NASA Goddard has provided several components, including the mass spectrometer, for a next-generation version of SAM, called the Mars Organic Molecular Analyzer, for ESA’s (European Space Agency) Rosalind Franklin Mars rover. A similar instrument, the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer, will explore Saturn’s moon Titan on NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft. Both instruments will be able to perform wet chemistry with the TMAH solvent.

Source: NASA.Gov

****


NASA / JPL - Caltech / MSSS

The Latest Update on Humanity's Twin Interstellar Probes...

Caltech / NASA - JPL

NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating (News Release)

On April 17, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, or LECP. The nuclear-powered spacecraft is running low on power, and turning off the LECP is considered the best way to keep humanity’s first interstellar explorer going.

The LECP has been operating almost without interruption since Voyager 1 launched in 1977 — almost 49 years. It measures low-energy charged particles, including ions, electrons and cosmic rays originating from our Solar System and galaxy. The instrument has provided critical data about the structure of the interstellar medium, detecting pressure fronts and regions of varying particle density in the space beyond our heliosphere.

The twin Voyagers are the only spacecraft that are far enough from Earth to provide this information.

Like Voyager 2, Voyager 1 relies on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, a device that converts heat from decaying plutonium into electricity. Both probes lose about 4 watts of power each year. After almost a half-century in space, power margins have grown razor thin, requiring the team to conserve energy by shutting off heaters and instruments while making sure the spacecraft don’t get so cold that their fuel lines freeze.

During a routine, planned roll maneuver on February 27, Voyager 1’s power levels fell unexpectedly. Mission engineers knew that any additional drop in power could trigger the spacecraft’s undervoltage fault protection system, which would shut down components on its own to safeguard the probe, requiring recovery by the flight team — a lengthy process that carries its own risks.

The Voyager team needed to act first.

“While shutting down a science instrument is not anybody’s preference, it is the best option available,” said Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at JPL. “Voyager 1 still has two remaining operating science instruments — one that listens to plasma waves and one that measures magnetic fields. They are still working great, sending back data from a region of space no other human-made craft has ever explored. The team remains focused on keeping both Voyagers going for as long as possible.”

Far-out plan

The choice of which instrument to turn off next wasn’t made in the heat of the moment. Years ago, the Voyager science and engineering teams sat down together and agreed on the order in which they would shut off parts of the spacecraft while ensuring that the mission can continue to conduct its unique science. Of the 10 identical sets of instruments that each spacecraft carries, seven have been shut off so far.

For Voyager 1, the LECP was next on that list. The team shut off the LECP on Voyager 2 in March 2025.

Because Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (25 billion kilometers) from Earth, the sequence of commands to shut down the instrument will take 23 or so hours to reach the spacecraft, and the shutdown process itself will take about three hours and 15 minutes to complete. One part of the LECP — a small motor that spins the sensor in a circle to scan in all directions — will remain on. It uses little power (0.5 watts), and keeping it running gives the team the best chance of being able to turn the instrument back on someday if they find extra power.

What comes next

Engineers are confident that shutting down the LECP will give Voyager 1 about a year of breathing room. They are using the time to finalize a more ambitious energy-saving fix for both Voyagers that they call “the Big Bang,” which is designed to further extend Voyager operations. The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data.

The team will implement the Big Bang on Voyager 2 first, which has a little more power to spare and is closer to Earth, making it the safer test subject. Tests are planned for May and June 2026. If they go well, the team will attempt the same fix on Voyager 1 no sooner than July.

If the Big Bang works, there is even a chance that Voyager 1’s LECP could be switched back on.

Source: NASA.Gov

America's Newest X-Plane (Briefly) Goes Airborne for the Second Time...

NASA / Jim Ross

NASA’s X-59 Experimental Supersonic Aircraft Makes Second Flight (News Release)

NASA’s quiet supersonic X-59 aircraft made its second flight on Friday, kicking off a series of dozens of test flights in 2026.

Although the flight duration was abbreviated due to a technical issue, the team was able to collect information that will inform future tests.

“Despite the early landing, this is a good day for the team. We collected more data, and the pilot landed safely,” said Cathy Bahm, project manager for NASA’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, in Edwards, California. “We’re looking forward to getting back to flight as soon as possible.”

The aircraft took off at 10:54 a.m. PDT from Edwards Air Force Base, near NASA Armstrong. Several minutes into the flight, pilot Jim “Clue” Less saw a vehicle system warning in the aircraft’s cockpit. Following flight procedures, the aircraft landed at 11:03 a.m. after a return-to-base was called.

“As we like to say, it was just like the simulator – and that’s what we like to hear,” Less said. “This is just the beginning of a long flight campaign.”

The X-59 is designed to fly supersonic – or faster than the speed of sound – while generating only a quiet thump instead of a loud sonic boom. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s QueSST mission, which is working to make commercial supersonic flight over land a reality.

The aircraft is set to accelerate testing in 2026, demonstrating performance and airworthiness during a process known as envelope expansion, where it will gradually fly faster and higher, on its way to supersonic speeds.

Source: NASA.Gov

America's Next Saturn-bound Robotic Explorer Is Officially in Assembly!

NASA / Johns Hopkins APL

NASA’s Dragonfly Mission Begins Rotorcraft Integration, Testing Stage (News Release - March 10)

NASA Dragonfly’s integration and testing – the activities involved in assembling the mission’s rotorcraft lander and testing it for the rigors of launch and extreme conditions of space – is officially underway in clean rooms and control rooms at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

In partnership with teams across government, industry and academia, APL is building the car-sized, nuclear-powered drone for NASA. Dragonfly is scheduled to launch no earlier than 2028 for a six-year voyage to Saturn’s moon Titan, where it will explore a range of diverse sites to study the chemistry, geology and atmosphere of the terrestrial moon and ultimately advance our understanding of life’s chemical origins.

Primary activities during the first weeks of this effort included power and functional testing on two critical components: the Integrated Electronics Module (IEM) and the Power Switching Units (PSUs). Think of the IEM as Dragonfly’s “brain,” containing the spacecraft’s core avionics (such as command and data handling, guidance and navigation, and communications) in a single space-saving and power-efficient box. The IEM and both PSUs were connected to Dragonfly’s wiring system and passed their first power-service checks.

“This milestone essentially marks the birth of our flight system,” said Elizabeth Turtle, Dragonfly principal investigator from APL. “Building a first-of-its kind vehicle to fly across another ocean world in our Solar System pushes us to the edge of what’s possible, but that’s exactly why this stage is so exciting. The team is doing an outstanding job, and every component we install and every test we run brings us one step closer to launching Dragonfly to Titan.”

Much work has led up to this point. The aeroshell and cruise-stage assemblies are moving forward with integration and testing at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. The team completed a thorough aerodynamic test series in the wind tunnels of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Testing continues in the Titan Chamber at APL of the foam coating that will insulate the rotorcraft from Titan’s frigid temperatures.

The science payload is coming together at locations around the country and internationally. The flight radio has been delivered, and additional flight systems are scheduled for delivery and testing within the next six months.

Dragonfly integration and testing will continue at APL through this year and into early 2027, when system-level testing is planned at Lockheed Martin. Late next year, the lander returns to APL for final space-environment testing before heading to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in spring 2028 for launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that summer.

“Starting integration and testing is a huge milestone for the Dragonfly team,” said Annette Dolbow, the Dragonfly integration and test lead at APL. “We’ve spent years designing and refining this amazing rotorcraft on computer screens and in laboratories, and now we get to bring all those elements together and transform Dragonfly into an actual flight system.”

Source: NASA.Gov

****


NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Ed Whitman


NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben

Today marks 40 days since my Mom's passing.

My family attended a Mass this morning to honor her.

Images of the Day #3: An AI Armored Personnel Carrier...

Richard T. Par

Just thought I'd share this illustration of an armored personnel carrier (APC) that I conjured in my mind over 15 years ago! I got the idea for this vehicle when I hung out at one of my friends' house and watched as he played the video game Gears of War on his Xbox console. In the level that my friend played in particular, he was battling monsters while driving through a city street using the Armadillo APC—shown at the bottom of this Blog entry.

The adventurous concept of traveling inside an armored ground transport with your fellow soldiers while fighting alien (or even supernatural) creatures is what motivated me to come up with this APC. There are no monsters in the AI images above and below, but this vehicle being depicted driving through an eerie forest at night is meant to give this picture a somewhat ominous feel!

And as with the hybrid ship that I rendered over a week ago, these APC illustrations are based on a sketch I drew earlier today...seen directly below. The APC is meant to have six wheels, but you'll notice that only five are seen in these pictures because the vehicle is depicted from a near-frontal view, and ChatGPT would've had a tricky time rendering two gun turrets that are placed between the three wheels that would be on the port side of the vehicle. I'll probably draw another artwork of this transport showing its side profile...so you can see what I'm talking about.

If this APC existed in real life, it would have a really difficult time traveling on city streets or up narrow mountainside roads considering how wide and heavy it would be. But I don't care about practicality here; I love this APC's design! Happy Sunday.


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par

Images of the Day #2: Ladies in White...

Richard T. Par

Just thought I'd share these illustrations of two ladies in white standing on a hilltop balcony...staring at distant house lights in the dark valley below. Just like the images of the hybrid ship in my previous entry, these pictures were rendered through ChatGPT. Unlike the images of the hybrid ship, these illustrations (which I rendered two days before I created those pictures of the ship) weren't based on a sketch I drew, but very specific descriptions in the prompt that I typed to create these AI images.

So what motivated me to render these particular images, you ask? Just me being a hopeless romantic. The illustration above is more faithful to the vision that was stuck in my head for years while the picture below has better image quality. Carry on!


Richard T. Par

Images of the Day: An AI Sea Vessel...

Richard T. Par

As mentioned in this Blog entry, I used ChatGPT to create other AI illustrations...not because I've forsaken traditional artwork using mechanical pencils and Crayola markers, but to quickly jot out concepts of different things like ships and military vehicles that have been on my mind for a while.

In the two AI images posted here, you see renderings of a hybrid ship that's part cruise liner and part research vessel.

In the sketch I made that's shown directly below (See? I told you that I didn't eschew traditional drawings for artificial intelligence), you can spot three trapezoid-shaped compartments near the top of the structure at the center of this vessel... Those are hotel rooms. I imagine that adventure-seeking one-percenters would book these rooms—which are basically intended to be penthouse suites.

Behind the center structure is a small submarine (specifically, a deep sea submersible that would be used to explore such locales as the sunken Titanic...but designed much better than OceanGate's Titan sub that made headlines in 2023) that could be deployed during the ship's expeditions. The submarine would obviously not be used for a journey to Antarctica or the Arctic region. I envisioned two submersibles being staged on the deck of this ship, but ChatGPT had difficulty rendering the one sub you see in these illustrations!

This ship would be equipped with its own helicopter (whose size is not to scale with the ship in these images) that could be parked inside the hangar that's visible near the stern of this vessel.

I imagined this ship traveling to such distant locales as Point Nemo—a spot in the South Pacific Ocean that's farthest from any land, located 1,670 miles (2,688 kilometers) from the nearest shore. To make such a trip, this ship would be nuclear-powered (hence the absence of smoke stacks)...like U.S. aircraft carriers and such non-military vessels as some Russian icebreakers! Speaking of icebreakers, this ship would also be one, as depicted by the vessel traveling through a field of ice in the two illustrations of this entry.

Speaking of U.S. aircraft carriers, I imagined this ship to be a floating city like the military vessels, and just as long too! Which is why I used ChatGPT to render multiple versions of this ship until it finally churned out the illustration at the top of this entry. As you can see, the vessel is so lengthy that there are not three but five trapezoidal penthouse suites at the middle of this ship! So cool.

How much would it cost to build this ship and who would operate it, you ask? I have no clue! I'm just amused that ChatGPT was able to bring this concept from my mind to the computer screen (and then sheets of paper, as I intend to print out these illustrations) with a properly-worded prompt.

Have a nice day.


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par

A New Poster for THE BROKEN TABLE...

Just thought I'd share this new poster for my 2020 short film, The Broken Table!

There are no plans to submit my project to any more film festivals or even shoot a sequel (considering the fact that I have no screenplay for one, and my lead actress, MJ, has been residing in her home country of Saudi Arabia since 2020), but I just wanted to use the latest wonders of technology to create new material for the film. Yes, I'm referring to ChatGPT.

Anyways, creating new posters for cinematic work that I did over half a decade ago isn't the only thing I used AI for. More illustrations to come later. Happy Monday!


Richard T. Par