00:02just a couple of years ago nasa tested its ingenuity helicopter in the skies over mars
00:08the little aircraft was the first step in better exploring alien worlds and nasa just announced
00:13the next off-world flyer they want to build this is what they're calling the dragonfly rotorcraft
00:18a nuclear-powered drone they want to send to titan saturn's largest moon the whole thing will
00:23be around the size of a car so comparable to their most recent flagship mars rovers but it's
00:27going to have more hurdles to jump through than ingenuity had on the red planet which is why wind
00:32testing is already underway putting their prototype through the paces with test lead bernadine giuliano
00:37saying about it we completed more than 700 total runs encompassing over 4 000 individual data points
00:44all test objectives were successfully accomplished and the data will help increase confidence in our
00:48simulation models on earth before extrapolating to titan conditions so what are titan's conditions
00:53well unlike mars titan's atmosphere is actually much thicker than earth's about three and a half
00:58times more dense but titan is also less than half the size of our planet with less gravity than our
01:03moon which will no doubt be good for an aircraft this would be the beginning of nasa's next big step
01:08in space exploration with putting human boots back on the moon and on the martian surface for the first
01:13time being their most immediate goals
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