Guillermo Adrián Chin Canché: the only Mexican on NASA's Dragonfly Project

The Mayan-born scientist's work will allow him to analyze the atmosphere of Saturn's Earth-like satellite Titan "to predict meteorological phenomena on the planet.

Guillermo Adrián Chin Canché, a Mexican scientist and astrobiologist of Mayan origin will become one of the participants in NASA's Dragonfly Project to study one of Saturn's largest moons: Titan. He will share your knowledge with 116 other scientists.

In his graduation thesis, entitled "Enceladus", Guillermo Adrián Chin Canché exposed the theory of Saturn's moons and caught the attention of NASA. The director of the Department of Space Studies, Scot Rafkin, called him to personally invite him to the "Dragonfly" project, which aims to analyze the atmosphere of those satellites and he is now the only scientist of Mexican origin in the project.

"To participate in this project means a lot, it is the culmination of effort and work but more importantly, it reflects the knowledge I inherited from my Mayan ancestors who were wise astronomers," he said this Tuesday in an interview with EFE, the only Mexican member of the Planetary Meteorology team of the project.

Titan Satellite

According to media outlet  El Financiero, Chin Canché's work for NASA will allow him to analyze the atmosphere of Saturn's Earth-like satellite Titan "to predict meteorological phenomena on the planet and determine how it affects the generation of organic molecules and how much turbulence there is so that Dragonfly can fly."

Dragonfly is a kind of helicopter that will fly over Saturn's largest moon in search of life, with data collection, much like Project Ingenuity on Mars.

Chin Canché explained that Titan's atmosphere is thick and is another known site in the Solar System with lakes, oceans and rivers, but instead of water it has liquid methane and ethane.