GREENBELT, Md. – NASA’s Dragonfly mission has cleared several key design, development and testing milestones and remains on track toward launch in July 2028, the agency reports. Continue reading original article.
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10 September 2025 – NASA’s Dragonfly mission, a nuclear-powered rotorcraft being developed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., is advancing through critical design, development, and testing milestones ahead of a planned July 2028 launch.
Recent testing included wind-tunnel trials of a full-scale rotor system inside NASA’s Transonic Dynamics Tunnel in Hampton, Va., where engineers simulated Titan’s atmospheric conditions and aerodynamic loads. At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS) passed acceptance review and is being prepared for space-environment testing and integration with the spacecraft. DraMS will serve as the mission’s primary tool for analyzing Titan’s surface and atmospheric chemistry.
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Jamie Whitney, Senior Editor
Military + Aerospace Electronics