NASA’s Dragonfly Mission to Titan Budget Soars to $3.35 Billion, Launch Set for 2028

Jakarta – NASA has confirmed that the Dragonfly spacecraft will fly to Titan, a moon of the planet Saturn. This ambitious mission was still allowed even though the budget had doubled.

Dragonfly completed its validation study on Tuesday, April 16. The validation study concluded that the total cost of the Dragonfly mission would reach 3.35 billion US dollars (Rp. 54 trillion). The initial total cost of this mission is 850 million US dollars (Rp. 13 trillion).

In addition, the launch of the mission will take place in July 2028. This specified launch time is the result of an initial review published last November. At that time, NASA said the Dragonfly mission had to be postponed for a year due to funding problems.

At the same time, the total costs determined are much more expensive than the costs approved by NASA when they established the New Frontiers mission in June 2019. In fact, NASA had said that they had a cost problem.

There are several factors that make the Dragonfly mission budget more expensive than before. To Space newsNASA cited replanning, design iterations, the impact of the pandemic, and supply chain problems as the reasons.

“The Dragonfly project underwent extensive design iterations prior to the Preliminary Design Review (PDR),” NASA said: “These cost increases, along with increases in labor rates and costs of parts and materials driven by COVID- 19.”

NASA also said that the cost level for the Dragonfly mission had increased to 2.1 billion US dollars (Rp. 34 trillion). This happens because the cost limit which was initially just 1 billion US dollars (Rp. 16 trillion) has been changed to account for inflation.

“In the three fiscal years following the selection of Dragonfly, NASA imposed cost limits in the current year due to budget constraints. The cumulative impact of NASA’s initial replanning, and other post-PDR impacts, accounted for nearly two-thirds of the cost increase. “, explained NASA.

Even though costs have increased significantly, NASA has prepared an additional budget for the Dragonfly launch. This is done so that Dragonfly will be on Titan in 2034 and can explore several promising locations.

Dragonfly is the first vehicle to land on the moon from another planet. The helicopter is being built at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and will have eight rotor blades so it can fly as drone a giant

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