Mission of ‘Dragonfly’ to the Titan of the Moon of Saturn: behind the schedule, Overbudget, says NASA Inspector

After his six -year trip to Saturn’s Moon Titan, Rotorcraft Lander of Dragonfly “will fly like a great drone,” explains his website, spending three years trying multiple landing sites to characterize the habitability of Titan and look for “precursors of the origin of life.” “However, the project has suffered multiple replacements that affect the cost and schedule, resulting in an increase in life cycle of almost $ 1 billion and more than 2 years of delays,” according to An advertisement from the NASA Inspector.

Of The Inspector General report:

The increase in costs and the schedule delay were largely the result of NASA’s direction [Johns Hopkins University] Applied Physics Laboratory to perform four replans between June 2019 and July 2023 in the development of Dragonfly. The justifications for these replans included the COVID-19 pandemic, the problems of the supply chain, the changes to accommodate a heavy lifting launch vehicle, projected financing challenges and inflation. ”
But its higher life cycle cost than expected more than $ 3 billion “will continue to absorb a growing proportion of the total budget of the planetary science division”, which means that the highest cost of Dragonfly (and “additional budget restrictions”) have contributed to a gap of at least 12 years on new borders on new borders. [planetary science] Mission will be released and endangered the future priorities described in the decadal surveys of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (National Academies). “

However, NASA’s press release indicates the mission “has cleaned several key designDevelopment and milestone test and remains on the way to launch in July 2028. “Its software defined radius has been completed, and the part of the spectrometer that analyzes the chemical components of Titan for” potentially biologically relevant “components (as well as structural and thermal tests of the terrain insulation).

“The mission is scheduled to launch in July 2028 in a NASA Spacex Falcon Falcon Falcon Falcon Spacex vehicle in Florida’s Kennedy Center.”

Thanks to Slashdot’s reader for a long time Schwit1 for detecting this news In the blog of space/science “Behind the Black”.