NASA has approved the development of a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, even though the cost has doubled since the mission was selected nearly five years ago. On April 16, NASA announced that the Dragonfly mission had passed validation. Passing the check allows: DragonflyA nuclear-powered rotorcraft that will travel to various locations on Titan to study the habitability of the Moon is entering full-scale development.

The mission passed part of its validation review last fall, but the agency said in November it would delay a final decision on the mission until the spring, after the fiscal year 2025 budget proposal is released. At that time, NASA also announced that the launch of the mission, which was previously planned for July 2027, was postponed by one year to July 2028.

The validation review establishes NASA’s formal commitment to the mission’s cost and schedule. NASA announces launch confirmation Dragonfly in July 2028 and the total mission cost was $3.35 billion. These costs are much higher than NASA approved in June 2019 when it selected Dragonfly as the final New Frontiers mission. At the time, the mission cost ceiling, which excludes launch and post-launch operations in what NASA calls Phases A through D, was $850 million.

In its approval announcement, NASA acknowledged that the total life cycle cost, which includes launch and operations, was twice the previous estimate. The agency blamed several factors, including rescheduling due to budget constraints, effects of the pandemic, and supply chain issues, as well as “deep design iteration.”

NASA told SpaceNews on April 19 that the costs included in the original cap had increased from $1 billion to $2.1 billion in “real-world” inflation-adjusted terms, hence the claim that costs had doubled.

“In each of the three fiscal years since Dragonfly was selected, NASA has imposed current-year spending caps due to budget constraints. The combined impact of these early NASA-led redesigns and those subsequent to the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) accounted for nearly two-thirds of the cost increase in the AD phase.” ” said NASA.

“The Dragonfly project also underwent an in-depth design iteration prior to PDR,” NASA added. “Cost increases caused by COVID, combined with higher labor rates and parts and material costs, are responsible for the balance of cost increases in the AD phase.”

These increases are evident in NASA’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal. NASA is requesting $434.6 million for Dragonfly in 2025, compared to an estimate of $355.5 million per mission in the agency’s 2024 budget request. NASA projects $1.68 billion for Dragonfly for fiscal years 2025 through 2028; That’s more than double what he envisioned for the same period in his 2024 proposal.

NASA also plans to spend more on Dragonfly’s launch. NASA has said it will receive a heavy launch vehicle later this year for a mission that would see Dragonfly reach Titan in 2034. This is the target date NASA chose for the mission in 2019, despite the two-year delay in its launch.

The agency continues to support the mission despite financial difficulties. “Dragonfly is an impressive science mission that has captured the interest of the broader community, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission,” Nicola Fox, NASA deputy administrator for science, said in a statement confirming Dragonfly. “Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with a rotorcraft beyond Earth.”

These cost increases, along with broader budget pressures on NASA in general and planetary science programs in particular, also have implications for future programs. Dragonfly is the fourth mission in the New Frontiers pipeline, following New Horizons, Juno and OSIRIS-REx. NASA had planned to issue a call for proposals for the fifth New Frontiers mission in 2023 but postponed it to 2026.

The agency also warned of potential difficulty delays for future missions in the Discovery series of planetary science missions, which have lower cost constraints than New Frontiers, and a series of small satellite planetary missions called SIMPLEx. “There are very few switches we can turn to respond to these short-term challenges in the budget,” Laurie Glaze, administrator of NASA’s planetary science division, said about delays in future mission proposals during an April 15 town hall.

Budget constraints have also impacted NASA’s ability to begin work on the future flagship planetary science mission, the Uranus Orbiter and Atmospheric Probe, most recently proposed by the Planetary Collapse Survey.

“In the current budget environment, we are unable to initiate the research and activities that we believe will be necessary to begin work on the mission,” Glaze said in a statement at City Hall. NASA hoped to start working on it this year or next year. “Currently the current funding situation does not seem to support this.”