{"id":246772,"date":"2026-11-06T18:08:04","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T00:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/nasa-funds-ion-powered-flying-drones-to-explore-saturns-largest-moon"},"modified":"2026-11-06T18:08:04","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T00:08:04","slug":"nasa-funds-ion-powered-flying-drones-to-explore-saturns-largest-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/nasa-funds-ion-powered-flying-drones-to-explore-saturns-largest-moon","title":{"rendered":"NASA funds ion-powered flying drones to explore Saturn\u2019s largest moon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>NASA is funding an ambitious new concept that could send swarms of tiny, silent, spherical \u201caerobots\u201d floating through the eerie underground caves of Titan, Saturn\u2019s largest moon.<\/p>\n<p>The project is called SPARK or Solid-state Propulsion for Autonomous Reconnaissance of Karst. Led by Daniel Drew, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at M\u0101noa, SPARK uses electrohydrodynamic (EHD) propulsion, commonly known as atmospheric ion thrusters.<\/p>\n<p>As EHD thrusters are solid-state and silent, the tech offers omnidirectional maneuverability without generating heavy downwash that could disturb delicate surface layers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA is funding an ambitious new concept that could send swarms of tiny, silent, spherical \u201caerobots\u201d floating through the eerie underground caves of Titan, Saturn\u2019s largest moon. The project is called SPARK or Solid-state Propulsion for Autonomous Reconnaissance of Karst. Led by Daniel Drew, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at M\u0101noa, SPARK [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,6,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-robotics-ai","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}