WASHINGTON — Citing funds uncertainty, NASA is pushing again the launch of the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan by a yr and suspending a key milestone in its improvement.
In a presentation at a Nov. 28 assembly of NASA’s Outer Planets Evaluation Group (OPAG), Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, mentioned company management determined to postpone formal affirmation of the mission earlier this month, a milestone the place the company units an official price and schedule for the mission.
The delay in affirmation by NASA’s Company Program Administration Council (APMC), she mentioned, relies on uncertainty about how a lot cash will probably be obtainable for the mission and different components of NASA’s planetary science portfolio given broader funds pressures on the company. “Due to these extremely giant uncertainties in FY ’24 and FY ’25 funding and budgets, the choice was made at that APMC to postpone the official affirmation,” she mentioned.
As a substitute, the APMC will reconvene after the discharge of the company’s fiscal yr 2025 funds proposal in early 2024. “We anticipate taking Dragonfly again to APMC within the spring” for a choice on affirmation, she mentioned. Within the meantime, although, NASA will permit the mission to proceed with some components of ultimate mission design and fabrication that normally don’t begin till after the affirmation assessment.
NASA requested $327.7 million for Dragonfly in fiscal yr 2024, which was 18% lower than what the mission acquired in 2023 however, the company mentioned on the time, would preserve the mission on schedule to satisfy a launch readiness date of June 2027. Mission officers warned in Might that the requested funding was under what they estimated was wanted and that they had been “evaluating price and schedule choices” for the mission.
Glaze mentioned on the OPAG assembly {that a} “replan” of the mission by the mission workforce over the summer time, utilizing a revised funds profile, led to a brand new launch readiness date of July 2028, one yr later than beforehand deliberate.
The delays for Dragonfly come as NASA grapples with projected funding shortfalls in its general planetary science division in addition to in lots of different components of the company, triggered by a funds deal in June that capped general non-defense discretionary spending at 2023 ranges for 2024 and solely a 1% enhance in 2025.
NASA requested $3.38 billion for planetary science in 2024, however a Home invoice would supply $3.1 billion and a Senate invoice $2.68 billion. The report accompanying the Senate invoice would direct NASA to spend $327.7 million on Dragonfly in 2024, whereas the Home report is silent on the mission.
Glaze mentioned that, regardless of the funds issues, there stays “unbelievable help” for Dragonfly inside the company. The mission, chosen by NASA in 2019 as a part of its New Frontiers line of medium-class planetary missions, would ship a drone to Titan, flying via the moon’s dense environment to go to a number of areas that will present clues if the planet may have as soon as supported life.
When NASA chosen Dragonfly, it deliberate a launch in 2026. The company introduced in 2020 a one-year delay within the launch, to 2027, citing exterior pressures on the company’s funds, together with these linked to the pandemic. Glaze, on the OPAG assembly, didn’t establish any issues inside to the mission that prompted the most recent delay.
She famous on the assembly that she had restricted choices to coping with decreased budgets. The division’s high precedence, she mentioned, is to finish Europa Clipper and launch it in October 2024, noting that any delay to that flagship-class mission would have its personal funds repercussions. Different priorities embody missions which have handed their affirmation opinions, such because the NEO Surveyor spacecraft to seek for close to Earth asteroids and the VIPER lunar rover, in addition to analysis funding.
Apart from the adjustments to Dragonfly, NASA has delayed requires future New Frontiers and Discovery missions and slowed the beginning of a brand new flagship mission, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe. She didn’t rule out adjustments to different missions in earlier levels of improvement relying on the severity of funds cuts. “Something within the portfolio that isn’t confirmed proper now could be in danger,” she mentioned later on the OPAG assembly. “We’re ready to see what occurs.”
