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Exploration

ESMD Progress: Not As Solid As Advertised?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 27, 2007

NASA Strategic Management Council Meeting 2 November 2006: Status of the Exploration Strategy and Architecture Activities

NASA Program Management Council Meeting Mintues and Actions 1 November 2006: ESMD Presentation

“… Within the program, three of the four projects are rated yellow: Orion, Ares and Ground Operations. Mission Operations Project is rated green at this time. … Green is on target, yellow is off target but recoverable, red is unrecoverable.”

“… Reserves posture: carrying 5-16% being held at the program level. This means that each project is not receiving full reserves at this time.”

“… The program is driving toward development by 2012 and would like to get flight dates as close as possible to 2012, so they are working different combinations to do that. However, the reserves fall in between 2012-2014, not when needed.”

Editor’s note: Since this meeting, the LRO program has already gone $45M over budget, principally at GSFC, per FY 2008 budget documents. More importantly, this presentation was made before the 2007 budget CR was announced and enacted – a budget that just makes bothersome things much worse for ESMD.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.