August 28, 2020

Dragonfly, Titan and the Search for Our Origins: APL Planetary Scientist Zibi Turtle at TED2020

Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle was a main stage speaker at TED2020, delivering a talk on Saturn's moon Titan and the revolutionary mission, Dragonfly, that APL is building for NASA's New Frontiers program to explore the ocean world. Credit: TED

Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle appeared on screen and her words cut through the silence evocatively.

"Picture a world with a variety of landforms," Turtle began. "It has a dense atmosphere within which rains sweep across its surface. It has mountains and plains; rivers, lakes and seas; sand dunes, and some impact craters.

"Sounds like Earth, right?

"This, is Titan."

On June 25, Turtle delivered a TED talk on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and Dragonfly, a rotorcraft lander mission being built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Over seven minutes, the APL planetary scientist described this mysterious ocean world and the daring voyage of Dragonfly — the newest mission in NASA's New Frontiers program — set to launch in 2027 and reach Titan in 2034.

For TED2020's "Uncharted" program, Turtle and Dragonfly were a perfect match.

"Dragonfly is a bold, game-changing mission to explore the solar system," said Jason Kalirai, the mission area executive for civil space at APL. "This mission is a visionary combination of creativity and scientific and technical expertise that will help us understand an exotic world that shares many similarities to our own planet. We're honored to have Zibi as our ambassador in telling Dragonfly's story, and leading the Dragonfly team in this unprecedented exploration. It is no doubt uncharted territory."

Turtle closed her talk by hitting on the magnitude of the mission:

"In 1994 Carl Sagan wrote 'On Titan, the molecules that have been raining down like manna from heaven for the last 4 billion years might still be there, largely unaltered, deep frozen, awaiting the chemists from Earth.'

"We are those chemists. Dragonfly is a search for greater understanding — not just of Titan and the mysteries of our solar system, but of our own origins."

TED2020 was a virtual experience because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Until now, the talk was only accessible to TED2020 attendees.

For more on Turtle, principal investigator of the Dragonfly mission and third female NASA planetary mission PI in history, visit the Johns Hopkins APL and NASA Solar System websites.

Note: Article updated on 9/28/2020 to reflect Dragonfly's new launch date.

Dragonfly and Titan in the News

NASA Authorizes Dragonfly Mission to Proceed with Estimated 2028 Launch Readiness Date

A Taste of Titan

Tunnel Visions

Why Titan?

Titan is an ocean world, and the only moon in our solar system with a dense atmosphere, which supports an Earth-like hydrological cycle of methane clouds, rain, and liquid flowing across the surface to fill lakes and seas. The abundant complex organic material accessible on Titan's surface makes it an ideal destination to study the conditions necessary for the habitability of an extraterrestrial environment and the kinds of chemical interactions that occurred before life developed on Earth.

More about Titan