Keith’s note: From NASA OIG: “We assessed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope project, a NASA observatory designed to explore dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics, to determine if NASA is managing the risks and mitigating future challenges with the Roman telescope while meeting its cost, schedule, and technological goals.” Full report: Audit of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Project
Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member... More by Keith Cowing
The tl;dr from the report:
WHAT WE FOUND
Although critical system integration, testing, and associated tasks remain, as of March 2024, Roman was meeting its cost obligations and schedule to launch by May 2027. Roman was on track to launch despite encountering contractor performance issues and cost overruns related to hardware anomalies, under scoping of work, and inadequate oversight of subcontractors. Roman remains on schedule because Science Mission Directorate officials conducted a replan in
May 2021 to mitigate the expected cost and schedule growth caused by COVID-19, increasing the life-cycle cost estimate from $3.9 billion to $4.3 billion. This replan also included delaying the launch readiness date from October 2026 to
May 2027. As of March 2024, Roman was tracking its project reserves and potential delays with L3Harris as its top risks. Roman has been using its project reserves to mitigate cost growth related to L3Harris’s performance challenges. Despite these contract value increases, Roman is still within its life-cycle cost estimate because the project’s reserves cover these extra costs.
Significant risks remain in NASA’s plan for transmitting Roman data to Earth. Roman is expected to produce an unprecedented amount of data. According to Roman’s space communication and navigation plan, it will utilize four space communication networks to meet its communication needs. As of April 2024, Roman had a draft Service Level Agreement with the NSN for command and control, navigation support, and data downlinking. In addition, the draft NSN Service Level Agreement includes resources from the DSN for command and control and navigation. NASA also has international agreements with ESA and JAXA for use of their respective networks for data downlinking. According to SCaN, ESA, and JAXA officials, three out of the four networks that Roman will rely on for navigation and data downlinking—NASA’s DSN, ESA’s European Space Agency Tracking Stations Network, and JAXA’s Usuda Deep Space Center—are currently oversubscribed and will be in even greater demand during Roman’s mission. Returning Roman’s science data to Earth is dependent on the ability to successfully downlink data through NASA’s NSN, as well as ESA and JAXA’s deep space communication networks. In addition, as of April 2024, the NSN did not have adequate capacity to support Roman’s mission requirements without planned upgrades to the White Sands antenna and lacked the funding to implement the necessary upgrades by the mission’s launch readiness date. Roman officials have not properly evaluated risks associated with transmitting data from these oversubscribed networks and do not have a contingency plan for downlinking data should any of the networks fail. However, NASA is planning to upgrade an existing NSN antenna by 2026 at its White Sands complex in New Mexico to support NASA missions, including Roman.
WHAT WE RECOMMENDED
We recommended NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science Mission Directorate coordinate with the Associate Administrator for Space Operations Mission Directorate to: (1) further evaluate space communication and navigation risks, including running and reviewing loading analysis from all four networks; (2) develop a contingency plan for Roman’s space communication and navigation services, including an assessment of the DSN’s ability to support Roman; and (3) assess the potential impacts of the delayed upgrades to the NSN on Roman’s scheduled launch timeline. We also recommended NASA’s Associate Administrator for International and Interagency Relations: (4) ensure future international agreements for space communication and navigation services include information-sharing provisions that allow NASA to conduct proper risk analysis, such as through access to capacity and loading analysis.
We provided a draft of this report to NASA management who concurred with our recommendations and described planned actions to address them. We consider management’s comments responsive; therefore, the recommendations are resolved and will be closed upon completion and verification of the proposed corrective actions.