How can a dragonfly hover without moving forward?

Answer: Its beating wings support its weight while balancing horizontal forces

Its beating wings support its weight while balancing horizontal forces ✓ — Wingbeats generate enough upward force to balance the dragonfly's weight, while horizontal forces roughly cancel over the wingbeat cycle. Dragonflies can adjust the timing and motion of their forewings and hindwings to control these forces. Hovering therefore requires active flight, not forward gliding.

Its long abdomen spins like a rotor to hold it up — The abdomen is not a spinning rotor and does not generate the lift that supports hovering. That force comes from the beating wings. Changes in body posture can help control flight without turning the abdomen into a propeller.

It glides on a breeze without needing to beat its wings — A dragonfly does not hover in still air simply by gliding on a breeze. Its moving wings must provide upward force to balance gravity. Wind changes the control needed, but does not replace the wingbeats.