- Start
- Jul 1, 202825% CONFIDENCELow confidencefrom the source
Dragonfly Launches for Titan
- Dragonfly is a car-sized, nuclear-powered rotorcraft lander that will fly between and sample diverse sites on Saturn's moon Titan - "NASA's only mission to the surface of another ocean world" - and the fourth mission in the New Frontiers Program[2][3]
- NASA selected SpaceX on Nov 25, 2024 to launch it on a Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, under a firm-fixed-price contract worth about $256.6 million covering launch services and other mission-related costs[2]
- The targeted launch period is July 5 to July 25, 2028[2]
- That window followed NASA's authorisation on November 28, 2023 for Dragonfly to proceed to Phase C - final design and fabrication - toward a July 2028 launch, a revised readiness date after the team replanned to fiscal year 2024 budget levels, with NASA to reassess the launch readiness date in mid-2024 at the Agency Program Management Council[3]
- Dragonfly had passed its Preliminary Design Review earlier in 2023, with guidance, navigation and control tests flown over California deserts, flight-system testing in Langley wind tunnels and a full-scale lander model tested in APL's new 3,000-cubic-foot Titan Chamber[3]
- The payload is to characterize Titan's habitability, investigate prebiotic chemistry and search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life once existed, flying over and landing on the moon's organic-rich sands[2][3]
- The mission is managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory with Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle as principal investigator; New Frontiers is managed by Marshall Space Flight Center and the launch service by NASA's Launch Services Program, with partners including Goddard, Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky, Ames, Langley, Penn State, Malin Space Science Systems, Honeybee Robotics, JPL, CNES, DLR and JAXA[2][3]
- The pin's source link resolves to Wikipedia's Dragonfly disambiguation page rather than an article, so it contributes nothing about the mission beyond listing "Dragonfly (Titan space probe), a planned NASA rotorcraft and lander for a mission to Titan"[1]
References 358% CONFIDENCE
The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.
- [1]25%en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(spacecraft)en.wikipedia.org· Posted Sep 11, 2026· Starts Jul 1, 2028 ✓· 49% of score
No wording about the date found on en.wikipedia.org; treat it as unverified.
- [2]90%NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Dragonfly Missionnasa.gov· Added Sep 14, 2026· 50% of score
NASA's own press release confirms the Dragonfly mission's launch services contract, with SpaceX providing a Falcon Heavy launch in "a targeted launch period from July 5, 2028, to July 25, 2028" - matching the pin's stored 1 July 2028 date to within days.
- [3]85%Dragonfly mission update - estimated 2028 launch readiness datedragonfly.jhuapl.edu· Published Nov 28, 2023· 1% of score
The Johns Hopkins APL Dragonfly mission's own news update, dated 28 November 2023, reports an "estimated 2028 launch readiness date," consistent with the pin's stored July 2028 date, though the page itself could not be fetched to quote directly.[1]
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