“We really started thinking about, what do we want to explore on Titan? We want to explore these interesting organic grains…Of course, organic stuff is…what life is made of. It’s made of carbon-based molecules. And so when we’re looking at Titan we’re looking at the most exciting carbon chemistry anywhere but Earth.”

Meet Jason Barnes (bit.ly/2Wllnyx), who was recently promoted to professor at the University of Idaho. Jason is a founding member of an international team of scientists that has spent years designing a robotic quadcopter that can land on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. This drone-like rotorcraft, which is affectionately named Dragonfly, is intended to fly from sampling site to sampling site, studying the moon’s atmosphere and surface. In the long run, Dragonfly should help scientists answer questions about how life started on Earth.

Learn more about Project Dragonfly, uidaho.edu/dragonfly.

Visit our website uidaho.edu/vandaltheory. Email us at [email protected].

Learn about Idaho’s premier research university, University of Idaho, at www.uidaho.edu.

The Dragonfly project will be led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and is funded by NASA in the amount of up to $850 million. The project is 100 percent federally funded.

More U of I research:

Doctoral student Maria Zubkova found that the amount of area burned across Africa declined by 18.5 percent between 2002 and 2016. This reduction was likely driven by an increase in plant-available moisture. Learn more (bit.ly/2WjsJ5P).

A group of current and retired faculty from the College of Art and Architecture contributed to the peer-reviewed online encyclopedia, Archipedia, which features the country's most architecturally significant structures. Read more (bit.ly/2pb0Occ).

U of I’s Tara Hudiburg was given the 2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government. Learn more (bit.ly/2JtIbXU).

Music:

“Young Republicans” by Steve Combs (bit.ly/2PsMCpw) via freemusicarchive.org, not modified (bit.ly/2Ju7MQb).

“Out of the Skies, Under the Earth” by Chris Zabriskie (bit.ly/2Pr0AYQ) via freemusicarchive.org, not modified (bit.ly/2Ju7MQb).