WASHINGTON — Mentioning funds uncertainty, NASA is pushing again the release of the Dragonfly undertaking to Saturn’s moon Titan by means of a 12 months and suspending a key milestone in its construction.
In a presentation at a Nov. 28 assembly of NASA’s Outer Planets Evaluation Workforce (OPAG), Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science department, stated company management determined to delay formal affirmation of the undertaking previous this month, a milestone the place the company units an professional price and agenda for the undertaking.
The prolong in affirmation by means of NASA’s Company Program Control Council (APMC), she stated, is in keeping with uncertainty about what quantity of money can be to be had for the undertaking and different portions of NASA’s planetary science portfolio given broader funds pressures at the company. “As a result of those extremely massive uncertainties in FY ’24 and FY ’25 investment and budgets, the verdict was once made at that APMC to delay the professional affirmation,” she stated.
As an alternative, the APMC will reconvene after the discharge of the company’s fiscal 12 months 2025 funds proposal in early 2024. “We await taking Dragonfly again to APMC within the spring” for a call on affirmation, she stated. Within the period in-between, regardless that, NASA will permit the undertaking to continue with some parts of ultimate undertaking design and fabrication that generally don’t get started till after the affirmation evaluate.
NASA asked $327.7 million for Dragonfly in fiscal 12 months 2024, which was once 18% lower than what the undertaking won in 2023 however, the company stated on the time, would stay the undertaking on agenda to fulfill a release readiness date of June 2027. Challenge officers warned in Might that the asked investment was once under what they estimated was once wanted and that they had been “comparing price and agenda choices” for the undertaking.
Glaze stated on the OPAG assembly {that a} “replan” of the undertaking by means of the undertaking group over the summer season, the use of a revised funds profile, ended in a brand new release readiness date of July 2028, 365 days later than in the past deliberate.
The delays for Dragonfly come as NASA grapples with projected investment shortfalls in its total planetary science department in addition to in lots of different portions of the company, caused by means of the cheap deal in June that capped total non-defense discretionary spending at 2023 ranges for 2024 and just a 1% building up in 2025.
NASA asked $3.38 billion for planetary science in 2024, however a Area invoice would supply $3.1 billion and a Senate invoice $2.68 billion. The file accompanying the Senate invoice would direct NASA to spend $327.7 million on Dragonfly in 2024, whilst the Area file is silent at the undertaking.
Glaze stated that, regardless of the funds issues, there stays “implausible make stronger” for Dragonfly inside the company. The undertaking, decided on by means of NASA in 2019 as a part of its New Frontiers line of medium-class planetary missions, would ship a drone to Titan, flying in the course of the moon’s dense environment to seek advice from a number of areas that can supply clues if the planet will have as soon as supported lifestyles.
When NASA decided on Dragonfly, it deliberate a release in 2026. The company introduced in 2020 a one-year prolong within the release, to 2027, bringing up exterior pressures at the company’s funds, together with the ones connected to the pandemic. Glaze, on the OPAG assembly, didn’t determine any issues interior to the undertaking that brought about the newest prolong.
She famous on the assembly that she had restricted choices to coping with diminished budgets. The department’s most sensible precedence, she stated, is to finish Europa Clipper and release it in October 2024, noting that any prolong to that flagship-class undertaking would have its personal funds repercussions. Different priorities come with missions that experience handed their affirmation critiques, such because the NEO Surveyor spacecraft to seek for close to Earth asteroids and the VIPER lunar rover, in addition to analysis investment.
But even so the adjustments to Dragonfly, NASA has behind schedule requires long run New Frontiers and Discovery missions and slowed the beginning of a brand new flagship undertaking, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe. She didn’t rule out adjustments to different missions in previous levels of construction relying at the severity of funds cuts. “The rest within the portfolio that’s not showed at the moment is in peril,” she stated later on the OPAG assembly. “We’re ready to peer what occurs.”
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