LAUREL, Md. — A proposed cut of nearly 20% within the budget for NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan in 2024 could force changes to the mission or its schedule, a top project official said May 3.
NASA’s fiscal yr 2024 budget proposal requested $327.7 million for Dragonfly, a rotorcraft that will land on Titan after which fly through the moon’s dense atmosphere, going to numerous locations to review the constructing blocks of life. Dragonfly is scheduled for launch in 2027, landing on Titan in 2034.
The budget proposal reflects an 18.1% reduction from the $400.1 million Dragonfly received in fiscal yr 2023. NASA’s budget document says only the agency “updated the budget profile to reflect updated estimates for a launch readiness date of June 2027.”
Speaking at a gathering of the Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG) here May 3, Zibi Turtle, principal investigator for Dragonfly on the Applied Physics Lab, said the fiscal yr 2024 proposal affects plans for the mission. “The NASA budget request for FY24 would fund Dragonfly at a level that’s below what we estimate is mandatory over our profile,” she said.
She didn’t specify how much of a difference there may be between the request and the mission’s profile, but said the project is taking a look at options on tips on how to address that shortfall. “We’re still in that technique of evaluating cost and schedule options moving forward.”
Dragonfly accomplished its preliminary design review in early March, which Turtle said went well. The mission is preparing for a confirmation review, where NASA will set a proper cost estimate and launch date for the project, within the early fall, and he or she noted that analysis of cost and schedule options can be a part of planning for the confirmation review.
The proposed cut has gotten the eye of members of Congress. In back-to-back hearings in April, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) asked NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in regards to the proposed cut. The Applied Physics Lab, which is leading Dragonfly, is predicated in Maryland.
“The whole lot I do know from the experts is that it doesn’t compute. You may’t cut by 20% and still remain on track,” Van Hollen said in a Senate appropriations hearing April 18.
Nelson said in each hearings that the cut wouldn’t delay Dragonfly’s 2027 launch. “We’re still planning on launching Dragonfly in ’27. That has not modified,” Nelson told Ruppersberger at a House appropriations hearing April 19. “Without delay, there will not be any plan for a cut in fiscal yr ’24.”
Earlier on the OPAG meeting, other NASA officials attempted to clarify the reduced funding for the mission as a part of the variability of the general appropriations process. “It’s sort of a moving goal,” said Henry Throop, a program scientist in NASA’s planetary science division, May 2. “That is enough for continued development of the mission.”
“The budget process doesn’t provide certainty,” said Curt Niebur, lead scientist for flight programs in NASA’s planetary science division, but he emphasized that NASA supported the mission.
“Dragonfly has had a rough road programmatically,” he said, a reference to issues reminiscent of a one-year delay within the launch NASA announced in 2020 to cover costs outside the mission itself, reminiscent of the effect of the pandemic on other planetary missions. “There’s a commitment to traveling that rough road in any respect levels, from the project on up.”
Coping with operations costs
The pandemic has been one key consider rising costs of planetary missions generally. One other, Niebur said on the OPAG meeting May 2, was growing costs of operating missions once they’re launched.
He said that planetary missions are overrunning their estimated costs for operations, often known as Phase E in NASA programmatic parlance, by a mean of 52% over their original proposals. “Now we have a giant Phase E problem.”
Missions have argued that they will’t provide updated estimates for operations costs until a review called Key Decision Point E, inside a number of months of launch. He suggested that puts NASA in a bind, since by that point the spacecraft is accomplished and prepared for launch. “What do you’re thinking that the chances are high that we are saying no to that, after we’re two months from launch?” he said. “That’s devastating our ability to plan ahead.”
The issues with increased operations costs across the board, Niebur said. “Every planetary mission has a Phase E upper,” or increase, he said. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is starting study to have a look at cost growth in operations of planetary and other missions.
He placed much of the blame for the operations cost increases on those proposing missions, for failing to have a look at performance of earlier missions in addition to rejecting proposals to put a cap on Phase E costs on future missions. “We seem unable, unwilling, reluctant to look back at past performance and use that to guide our missions for the longer term,” he said. “That ends now.”