APL Still Conducts Testing On Drone Dragonfly Titan Investigators

APL conducts testing on Dragonfly drones to investigate Titan (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA - The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is still testing Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered land drone with a size of a car belonging to the American Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA).

This testing needs to be carried out before the Dragonfly drone crosses Titan's sky, a moon from Saturn, to investigate complex chemical compounds related to the onset of life.

APL, developer and operator Dragonfly, must ensure the need of this vehicle. They must ensure that cameras, sensors, and samplers to investigate Titan have been installed on Dragonfly.

So far, two trials have been carried out in the Subsonic Tunnel of fire 14 times 22 feet and in the 16-foot Transonic Dynamics Tunnel (TDT). Each test has a different purpose.

The Subsonic Tunnel is used to validate models of the dynamics of the computational fluid and data collected through an integrated testing platform, while TDT is used to validate its model in simulations of Titan's atmospheric conditions.

Through these two tests, APL focused on two configurations, namely Dragonfly landing and powered flight transition when landing on Titan and forward flights above Titan's surface.

Test leader Bernadine Juliano said that his party was testing conditions to see the expected flight range, such as wind speed, rotor speed, and flight angle to assess the aerodynamic performance of the vehicle.

We completed more than 700 total processes, covering more than 4,000 individual data points. All testing goals have been achieved and the data will help increase confidence in our simulation model on Earth before extrapolating to Titan's condition," said Juliano.

Currently, APL is analyzing 14-time-22 test data with all partners from the Dragonfly mission, including University of Central Florida, Penn State University, Lockheed Martin Sikorsky, NASA