McKevitt, James E; Beegadhur, Shayne S; Zaripova, Alisa; Andino-Enríquez, José; Parkinson-Swift, Jonathan J; Ayin-Walsh, Louis; Dixon, Tom; (2022) Astraeus: a new perspective on Titan's lakes. In: International Astronautical Congress (IAC-22). (pp. pp. 1-12). International Astronautical Federation: Paris, France.

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Abstract

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, supports a dense atmosphere, numerous bodies of liquid on its surface, and as a richly organic world is a primary focus for understanding the processes that support the development of life. In-situ exploration of the body’s equatorial regions, something begun by the Huygens lander in the early 2000s, is soon set to continue with the upcoming Dragonfly quadcopter. This commitment of NASA to flying on the body marks a bold step towards more adventurous mission architectures, and following the mission’s completion, numerous other opportunities will be available where mission designers can go further and leverage hundreds of years of human experience traversing surface, atmosphere and liquid on Earth to begin the first in-situ exploration of Titan’s polar lakes. This mission offers a distributed architecture across Titan’s orbit, upper atmosphere, near surface atmosphere, and surface lakes.

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