Delays coming to NASA’s Dragonfly Titan drone

Because of budget deals on the hill, NASA is working on how to deal with limited budget increases over the next few years. One mission that will suffer from that is Dragonfly, who is seeing a delay to an important review to set a launch timeline and pricing.

Dragonfly not the priority at the moment

NASA has postponed confirming Dragonfly’s official confirmation as a mission, which was set to take place this month. This milestones sets cost and timelines for the mission, including potential launch dates.

While the agency is still working on developing the technology for the spacecraft, formal funding and everything else that goes into that review will be moved as early as next Spring for the 2025 fiscal year.

The pause comes as NASA is working on how its current science missions will continue with the funding limitations imposed by deals made on Capitol Hill. For the next two fiscal years, NASA’s budget is basically frozen at what it was for 2023, although 2025 will see a 1% boost. This has been because of Republican’s wish to reduce spending across all government programs except defense.

Dragonfly, a drone mission to Saturn‘s moon Titian, is caught up in the need by NASA’s Science devision to prepare for future funding uncertainties.

Since Ingenuity’s success over the years, a lot of eyes are on seeing how interplanetary flight can expand exploration possibilities. However, NASA’s Planetary division is full of an endless list of other missions that could also take place, and some that are hogging a lot of the funds.

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NASA’s science missions are kinda out of control

NASA’s Planetary missions are legendary and have been the gold standard for how other agencies try to explore the solar system.

However, lately NASA seems to have gotten itself in a pickle with a few missions that just aren’t moving fast enough for them.

Over the last decade NASA’s primary mission it was developing was the James Webb Space Telescope. Heavily delayed and costing billions, it does look like it paid off but now NASA is working on another mission that could cost even more.

the Mars Sample Return Mission was pretty much forced into existence with the inclusion of coring and sampling equipment on the Perseverance mission. At the time of launch, and honestly still now, NASA has no idea how it would retrieve the samples but vowed to make it happen.

Estimations have given MSR an overall price tag of $10 billion dollars. A price Congress is unwilling to pay and gave the agency a cap of half that, if they want it funded at all.

Right now NASA is prioritizing getting Europa Clipper finished and launched in October 2024 as any delays could have repercussions of its own for NASA’s Budget. NASA also has slowed the development of a new flagship mission to Uranus as well as delays to New Frontier and Discovery missions.

“Anything in the portfolio that is not confirmed right now is at risk,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said at an agency meeting.