NASA confirms Dragonfly mission despite doubled costs

NASA has approved for development a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan despite a cost that has doubled since the agency selected the mission nearly five years ago. NASA announced April 16 that the Dragonfly mission had passed its confirmation review. Passing the review allows Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered rotorcraft that will travel to various locations on Titan to study the moon’s habitability, to move into full-scale development. The mission went through part of its confirmation review last fall, but the agency said in November that it would defer a final decision on the mission until the spring, after the release of the fiscal year 2025 budget proposal. NASA also announced then that the launch of the mission, previously scheduled for July 2027, had slipped a year to July 2028. The confirmation review sets a formal commitment by NASA to the cost and schedule for a mission. NASA said that it confirmed a July 2028 launch for Dragonfly and a total mission cost of $3.35 billion. That cost is far higher than what NASA approved when it selected Dragonfly in June 2019 as its latest New Frontiers mission. At that time, the mission had a cost cap of $850 million for what NASA designates as Phases A through D, which excludes launch and operations after launch. NASA, in its announcement about the confirmation, acknowledged the total lifecycle cost, which does include launch and operations, was double from what that earlier estimate. The agency blamed several factors, including replanning due to budget constraints, impacts of the pandemic and supply chain challenges, and an “in-depth design iteration.”

NASA's Dragonfly mission is now scheduled to launch in 2028 and arrive on Saturn's moon Titan in 2034. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

In a statement to SpaceNews April 19, NASA said the costs included in that original cap increased from $1 billion in “real year” dollars, adjusted for inflation, to $2.1 billion, hence the statement that costs had doubled.

“In each of the three fiscal years following Dragonfly’s selection, NASA imposed a cost cap in the current year due to budget constraints. The cumulative impact of these early NASA-directed replans, and another after the Preliminary Design Review (PDR), are responsible for nearly two thirds of the increase in Phase A-D costs,” NASA stated.

“The Dragonfly project also conducted an in-depth design iteration prior to PDR,” NASA added. “The increased costs of that, combined with COVID-driven increases in labor rates and the costs of parts and materials, are responsible for the balance of the increase in Phase A-D costs.”

Those increases are apparent in NASA’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal. NASA is requesting $434.6 million for Dragonfly in 2025, compared to a projection of $355.5 million for the mission in the agency’s 2024 budget request. For fiscal years 2025 through 2028, NASA is now projecting spending $1.68 billion on Dragonfly, double the projection for the same period in its 2024 proposal.

NASA also anticipates spending more on Dragonfly’s launch. NASA said it will procure a heavy-lift launch vehicle for the mission later this year that will allow Dragonfly to arrive at Titan in 2034. That is the date planned when NASA selected the mission in 2019, despite a two-year delay in its launch since then.

They agency remains supportive about the mission despite the cost challenges. “Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission,” Nicola Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, said in the statement about Dragonfly’s confirmation. “Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth.”

Those cost increases, along with broader budget pressures on NASA in general and its planetary science programs in particular, have implications for future programs. Dragonfly is the fourth mission in the New Frontiers line, after New Horizons, Juno and OSIRIS-REx. NASA had planned to release a call for proposals for the fifth New Frontiers mission in 2023, but has delayed that to no earlier than 2026.

The agency has also warned of likely delays in calls for future missions in the Discovery line of planetary science missions, with lower cost caps than New Frontiers, as well as a line of planetary smallsat missions called SIMPLEx. “We have very few knobs that we can turn in order to respond to these short-term challenges in the budget,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, on delays in future calls for mission proposals during an April 15 town hall.

The budget constraints have also affected NASA’s ability to start work on a future flagship planetary science mission, a Uranus orbiter and atmospheric probe that was recommended by the most recent planetary science decadal survey.

“In the current budget environment, we’re unable to begin the studies and activities we think would be required” to start work on the mission, Glaze said at the town hall. NASA had hoped to start work on that this year or next year. “Right now, the current funding situation does not seem to support that.”

Artemis 2 Orion spacecraft starts testing ahead of moon mission with astronauts in 2025

NASA's next moon spacecraft for humans made one small leap into an altitude chamber for vital testing before it brings astronauts on board. The Orion spacecraft for Artemis 2 is slated to fly around the moon with four astronauts no earlier than September 2025 — but first, engineers with NASA want to make sure it is ready for the job. Testing in a vacuum chamber at NASA's Kennedy Space Center began Wednesday (April 10) to assess Orion for "electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic compatibility," NASA officials wrote in a statement. The aim is to make sure the spacecraft can continue working well amid these fields, both spacecraft-generated and space-generated, ahead of the big launch day. The four Artemis 2 astronauts who will fly around the moon aboard Orion are NASA commander Reid Wiseman, NASA pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, or LEO), NASA mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman to go beyond LEO) and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American to achieve the feat). Their spacecraft, now at KSC's Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building, is inside a chamber with a lot of moon heritage. It was used to "test environmental and life support systems on the lunar and command modules during the Apollo program" that brought nine astronaut crews to the moon between 1968 and 1972, NASA officials wrote.

The Artemis 2 moon spacecraft lifts into an altitude chamber at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on April 4, 2024. The Orion spacecraft will undergo electromagnetic compatibility and interference testing inside the chamber at the Operations and Checkout Building. (Image credit: NASA/Amanda Stevenson)

The Artemis 2 moon astronauts pose in the well deck of the USS San Diego during recovery exercises on Feb. 25, 2024. From left: Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, NASA mission specialist Christina Koch, NASA pilot Victor Glover and NASA commander Reid Wiseman. (Image credit: NASA/Isaac Watson)

There are multiple altitude chambers available at KSC; Orion is in the west chamber, which was upgraded to "test the spacecraft in a vacuum environment that simulates an altitude of up to 250,000 feet (76.2 km)," NASA wrote.

Technicians hoisted Orion into that chamber on April 4 using a newly installed 30-ton crane in the building, which can move the stacked Orion crew and service modules into the chamber, manipulate the lid of the chamber and carefully transfer the spacecraft in the building's high bay.

While Orion spacecraft have flown to space twice before, this mission will be the first with astronauts on board. It will also test new systems, such as life support. (The spacecraft model's previous journeys were the Artemis 1 uncrewed mission to lunar orbit in late 2022 and a brief trip to Earth orbit in 2014.)

Artemis 2's Orion has more work in store after the altitude chamber. It will next be sent to another zone, called Final Assembly and Systems Testing, in the same KSC building. Then, more altitude testing will happen "to conduct a test that simulates as close as possible the conditions in the vacuum of deep space," NASA wrote. Those altitude tests could begin as soon as this summer.

Artemis 2 will kick off the larger crewed Artemis program, which plans to put boots on the moon again with Artemis 3 as soon as 2026. Both missions were delayed in January 2024 due to technical issues; Artemis 2 was pushed back about nine months while Artemis 3 is forecast to wait an extra year.

The NASA-led Artemis program is eventually slated to put a settlement at the moon's south pole, near water resources that exist there.

The Artemis Accords include 35 countries committing to peaceful space exploration norms led by NASA; a subset of those countries, including Canada, are providing hardware for moon missions. Japan, another signatory to Artemis, committed to a pressurized lunar rover for astronauts and will be the first country other than the United States to land an astronaut on the moon, NASA and Japan announced on Wednesday (April 10).

Scout Space eyes military customers for space domain awareness sensor

Scout Space, a startup based in Reston, Virginia, is developing a space domain awareness sensor aimed at the military market as the U.S. seeks new ways to monitor and protect its assets in orbit. The company on April 4 announced it won a $1.8 million Small Business Innovation Research contract under the SpaceWERX Tactically Responsive Space challenge, in partnership with the Space Systems Command’s Space Safari program office. Scout’s chief executive Philip Hover-Smoot said the company is using a portion of the funding to accelerate the development of Owl, an optical telescope designed to track objects in space with great detail. This can be valuable for the military in situations where they need to identify a specific type of satellite or even its functionality. “The space domain awareness capabilities of the Owl sensor enable flexibility and our ability to quickly respond to meet the mission need,” said Capt. George Eberwine, program manager at Space Safari. “This partnership with Scout is an example of Space Safari’s efforts to accelerate innovation to support future TacRS operations.” Since it was founded in 2019, the company has developed smaller sensors for space traffic management and other applications in low Earth orbit. The Owl sensor is designed for “more exotic deployment opportunities,” said Hover-Smoot, including geostationary satellites and lunar missions. “It is a large sensor and it has substantial power requirements.”

Illustration of Scout Space Owl on an orbital transfer vehicle spacecraft. Credit: Scout Space

The Space Force is going to seek new types of space domain awareness technologies, he added, as the U.S. military is prioritizing space surveillance to defend its assets against potential threats from rivals like China and Russia.

“There is a lot of competition and there is a lot of need as every platform that goes to space needs sensors — for safety and security applications as space becomes more congested,” said Hover-Smoot.

China launches first of a new series of Yaogan reconnaissance satellites

China launched its first Yaogan-42 satellite late Tuesday, adding to the country’s growing military satellite reconnaissance capabilities. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 6:56 p.m. Eastern (2256 UTC) April 2. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced launch success within the hour. CASC’s statement also revealed the previously unknown payload to be Yaogan-42 (01) (“remote sensing-42 (01)”). The satellite was later tracked by the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron (SDS) in a roughly 500-kilometer-altitude orbit inclined by 35 degrees. Both Yaogan-42 (02) and its Long March 2D launcher were developed and provided by CASC’s Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST). Neither CASC nor Chinese state media provided any details regarding the classified satellite. These statements omitted the usual general description of Yaogan satellites. Some Yaogan satellites are described as being for purposes including land survey, crop yield estimation, environmental management, meteorological warning and forecasting, and disaster prevention and reduction. Uses of others include “electromagnetic environment detection and related technical tests.”

A Long March 2D lifts off from Xichang spaceport on April 2 (UTC), 2024, carrying the Yaogan-42 (01) satellite. Credit: Ourspace

Outside observers assess Yaogan series satellites to be designated for military and civilian purposes.

The various series of Yaogan satellites are understood to include optical imaging, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) satellites. This combination provides high-resolution imagery and all-weather and all-day and night imagery, along with the collection of electronic signals from radar, communication systems and other electronic devices, with coverage of both land and sea.

The vast majority of Yaogan satellites operate in a series of low Earth and sun-synchronous orbits. Some groups of Yaogan satellites, such as Yaogan-31, could be analogous to U.S. Department of Defense Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellite triplets. Other groups, in orbits with inclinations of 35 degrees, ang spaced 60 or 120 degrees apart, provide near constant surveillance over areas of security concern close to China.

Additionally China launched the Yaogan-41 satellite towards geosynchronous orbit in late 2023. That satellite launched on a Long March 5, China’s largest operational rocket. The mission A used a new, elongated 18.5-meter-long, 5.2-meter-diameter payload fairing.

Tuesday’s launch was China’s 15th orbital mission of 2024. The country is aiming to launch around 100 times across 2024. Around 70 will be conducted by CASC, with China’s commercial launch service providers planning around 30 launches.

Commercial activity will include the new Tianlong-3 from Space Pioneer. The 71-meter-long rocket will be capable of lifting 17 tons of payload to low Earth orbit, or 14 tons to 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit, according to the firm. The rocket would become China’s second most capable rocket, behind the Long March 5. It is intended to have a reusable first stage in the future.

SAST plans to launch its new, 3.8-meter-diameter Long March 12, previously referred to as the “XLV,” during 2024.

SpaceX launches Eutelsat 36D, lands booster on seventh reuse anniversary

SpaceX launched Eutelsat’s latest geostationary satellite March 30 on a trip due to take around half a year to a geostationary orbit slot over Africa and Eurasia. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the roughly 5,000-kilogram Eutelsat 36D lifted off 5:52 p.m. Eastern from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and placed the satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit 34 minutes later. Eutelsat 36D is based on the all-electric Airbus Eurostar Neo platform and equipped with 70 physical Ku-band transponders for providing TV and government connectivity services from 36 degrees East. The satellite has a steerable antenna and is set to replace French fleet operator Eutelsat’s aging Eutelsat 36B satellite. Eva Berneke, Eutelsat’s CEO, said Eutelsat 36D is on track to start commercial services in the second half of 2024, after reaching position and completing health checks. The satellite would be co-located with Ekspress-AMU1, also known as Eutelsat 36C, which Russia’s RSCC operates. Ekspress-AMU1 is one of the satellites Eutelsat leases capacity from to have been caught up in sanctions amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

SpaceX launched a geostationary satellite for Eutelsat in its 30th mission so far this year. Credit: SpaceX

Reuse anniversary

The rocket’s first stage landed as planned on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean post-launch, marking the 273rd time SpaceX has returned a Falcon 9 booster for reuse.

SpaceX launched its first reused Falcon 9 booster for a customer seven years earlier in a mission for SES of Luxembourg March 30, 2017.

The Eutelsat 36D launch also marked SpaceX’s 30th mission this year.

But less than four hours later, SpaceX launched a batch of satellites for its Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband constellation from a nearby pad at the Cape.

SpaceX had planned to launch another set of Starlink satellites March 30 from Vandenberg, California, but scrubbed this mission because of poor weather.

Alongside 35 geostationary satellites, Eutelsat operates a network of more than 600 LEO satellites after buying OneWeb last year.

The company expects to have completed 90% of the ground network OneWeb needs for full global services by the end of June.

According to Eutelsat, multi-orbit capabilities will give it an edge over Starlink and other single-orbit constellations by offering enterprise and government customers extra network redundancy and flexibility.