DragonFly is an aerial science exploration and sample acquisition mission designated for Saturn’s largest Moon, Titan. Locations of interest on Titan will be visited via an OctoCopter. While Titan has an atmosphere that has Nitrogen as a major constituent (i.e., approximately 95%), its surface pressure and temperature are 1.5 atm and 94K respectively. These are cryogenic state conditions. Gravity on Titan is approximately 1/7th that of Earth. Given the presence of an atmosphere, temperature control on the OctoCopter (and the associated instrument package) will be influenced by natural convection with the OctoCopter’s exterior surfaces when it is stationary on the ground. In order to properly account for convective heat transfer phenomena in a different gravitational reference frame, analysis and experiments must be performed do determine the magnitude of convective heat transfer occurring. The DragonFly DraMS ColdZone team from the Cryogenic and Fluids Branch designed, fabricated, and performed convective heat transfer experiments applicable to the Titan atmosphere.
