NASA has authorized another drone mission to space, this time to explore Saturn’s moon, Titan.
On Tuesday, the space agency greenlit the “Dragonfly” project, which involves developing a remote-controlled drone and then launching it toward Saturn for an eventual landing on Titan.
“The decision allows the mission to progress to completion of final design, followed by the construction and testing of the entire spacecraft and science instruments,” NASA says.
However, Dragonfly won’t resemble a typical drone or the Ingenuity helicopter flown on Mars. Instead, this nuclear-powered "rotorcraft" will be the size of a small car and feature eight rotors.
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In 2019, NASA said the Dragonfly mission envisioned sending the craft to explore Titan, a moon that may contain liquid water and other organic materials necessary to support life. The project later cleared NASA’s preliminary reviews, but the space agency ordered the Dragonfly team to replan the mission according to the current federal funding environment.
"With the release of the president’s fiscal year 2025 budget request, Dragonfly is confirmed with a total lifecycle cost of $3.35 billion and a launch date of July 2028," NASA said on Tuesday. This means Dragonfly will cost about two times more than originally expected, due to “the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain increases, and the results of an in-depth design iteration."
In addition, the Dragonfly mission launch date has been pushed from 2026 to 2028. But the good news is that the Dragonfly craft is still expected to arrive on Titan in 2034, thanks to NASA providing additional funding for a “heavy-lift launch vehicle to shorten the mission’s cruise phase.”
Once it lands on Titan, NASA plans on using the craft to “fly to dozens of promising locations on the moon, looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and the early Earth before life developed.”
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is leading the development of Dragonfly.