Despite the fact that the mission’s cost has increased since NASA decided to pursue it over five years ago, the agency has authorized the trip to Titan, the moon of Saturn, for development.
NASA said on April 16 that the confirmation evaluation for the Dragonfly mission had been successful. If the evaluation is approved, full-scale development of Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered rotorcraft that will visit different parts of Titan to investigate the moon’s habitability, can begin.
The mission completed a portion of its confirmation evaluation in the fall of last year, but the agency announced in November that it would postpone making a final decision until the spring, following the release of the budget plan for the fiscal year 2025. At that time, NASA also declared that the mission’s launch, which had been planned for July 2027, had been rescheduled for July 2028.
NASA formally commits to the mission budget and timeline during the confirmation review. NASA said that it has verified Dragonfly’s July 2028 launch date and $3.35 billion mission budget.
That amount is far more than what NASA authorized when it decided to launch Dragonfly as its most recent New Frontiers mission in June 2019. At that time, NASA classified the mission’s Phases A through D as having a maximum cost of $850 million, excluding launch and post-launch operations.
In announcing the confirmation, NASA stated that the whole lifecycle cost—which does include launch and operations—was twice as high as the previous estimate. The government placed the blame on a number of things, including “in-depth design iteration,” pandemic effects, supply chain difficulties, and budgetary limits that forced a rescheduling.
NASA claims that the initial cap covered expenditures that rose from $1 billion in inflation-adjusted “real year” dollars to $2.1 billion, which is why the claim that costs had doubled was made.
“In each of the three fiscal years following Dragonfly’s selection, NASA imposed a cost cap in the current year due to budget constraints. The cumulative impact of these early NASA-directed replans, and another after the Preliminary Design Review (PDR), are responsible for nearly two thirds of the increase in Phase A-D costs,” according to NASA.
Prior to PDR, the Dragonfly project also carried out a thorough design iteration, according to NASA. “The increased costs of that, combined with COVID-driven increases in labor rates and the costs of parts and materials, are responsible for the balance of the increase in Phase A-D costs.”
The NASA budget request for the fiscal year 2025 clearly shows those increases. In contrast to its projected budget of $355.5 million for the mission in 2024, NASA is asking for $434.6 million for Dragonfly in 2025. NASA now projects spending $1.68 billion on Dragonfly for the fiscal years 2025 through 2028, which is double what it had projected in its 2024 plan for the same time.
Additionally, NASA plans to spend more money launching Dragonfly. According to NASA, later this year, a heavy-lift launch vehicle will be acquired for the project, enabling Dragonfly to reach Titan in 2034. Despite a two-year delay in launch since then, that is the date set when NASA picked the mission in 2019.
Despite the financial difficulties, the organization continues to support the mission. “Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission,” NASA Associate Administrator for Science Nicola Fox said in a statement regarding the mission’s approval. “Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth.”
Additionally, NASA plans to spend more money launching Dragonfly. According to NASA, later this year, a heavy-lift launch vehicle will be acquired for the project, enabling Dragonfly to reach Titan in 2034. Despite a two-year delay in launch since then, that is the date set when NASA picked the mission in 2019.
The agency has also issued a warning about potential delays in requests for future proposals for planetary smallsat missions named SIMPLEx and the Discovery line of planetary scientific missions, which have lower cost caps than New Frontiers. During a town hall on April 15, NASA’s planetary science division director Lori Glaze stated, “We have very few knobs that we can turn in order to respond to these short-term challenges in the budget.” Glaze also mentioned delays in future calls for mission ideas.
NASA’s ability to begin work on a future flagship planetary scientific mission, an atmosphere probe and Uranus orbiter, which was suggested by the most recent planetary science decadal study, has also been hampered by budgetary constraints.
Glaze stated during the town hall, “In the current budget environment, we’re unable to begin the studies and activities we think would be required” to get the mission underway. NASA had hoped to begin that project this year or the following year. “Right now, the current funding situation does not seem to support that.”
