An internal audit has slammed NASA over its handling of the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The drone-like rotorcraft, which is designed to land on and gather samples from Titan, has been hit by a two-year delay, with costs surging by $1bn to $3.3bn. NASA now envisions a launch date of July 2028 with Dragonfly arriving at Titan in 2034.
NASA chose Dragonfly in June 2019 as the next mission under its New Frontiers programme. Managed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, it is a nuclear-powered, car-sized craft with eight rotors. Dragonly will spend over three years studying potential landing sites before collecting data on Titan’s unique liquid environment and looking for signs that it could support life.
The audit, carried out by NASA’s Inspector General, took no issue with NASA’s tests of the rotors’ performance, which were carried out via simulations. Indeed, the mission team is already planning formal testing of the system to start in January. But the audit criticized NASA for letting Dragonfly’s development “proceed under less than ideal circumstances”, including with a “lower than optimum project cost reserves”. NASA demands new designs for cost-hit Mars Sample Return mission
Its report aims to now avoid those problems affecting future New Horizon missions. Specifically, it calls on Nicky Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for its science mission directorate, to document lessons learned from NASA’s decision to start work on the project before establishing a baseline commitment.
It also says that NASA should maintain adequate levels of “unallocated future expenses” for the project and make sure that “the science community is informed of updates to the expected scope and cadence for future New Frontier missions”. A NASA spokesperson told Physics World that NASA management agrees with the recommendations in the report adding that the agency “will use existing resources to address [them]”.
