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Artemis

GAO: NASA Lunar Programs: Significant Work Remains

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
May 27, 2021
Filed under
GAO: NASA Lunar Programs: Significant Work Remains

GAO: NASA Lunar Programs: Significant Work Remains, Underscoring Challenges to Achieving Moon Landing in 2024
Marc’s note: With the current budget process and timelines, does anyone seriously believe a human landing will happen in 2024 anymore?
What GAO Found
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has initiated eight lunar programs since 2017 to help NASA achieve its goal of returning humans to the Moon. NASA plans to conduct this mission, known as Artemis III, in 2024. NASA has made progress by completing some early lunar program development activities including initial contract awards, but an ambitious schedule decreases the likelihood of NASA achieving its goal. For example, NASA’s planned pace to develop a Human Landing System, shown below, is months faster than other spaceflight programs, and a lander is inherently more complex because it supports human spaceflight.

NASA also faces technical risks. For example, the Gateway–which NASA is developing to be an outpost orbiting the Moon–will rely on power and propulsion technology that has never before been used, and contractor efforts to develop the technology are behind schedule. NASA officials said they do not have a technology backup that would meet mission requirements. GAO best practices for technology assessments state that if a technology is not adequately mature, management should assess off-ramps at milestones. For this program, off-ramps would include potentially reducing the amount of power the system is required to provide to the Gateway or reassessing the schedule to allow for more time to develop the technology. NASA risks costly design changes or delays if the agency does not identify off-ramps before committing significant resources.
NASA has not fully addressed management challenges related to its lunar programs that were identified in a 2020 NASA-sponsored study. For example, GAO found that NASA assigned Artemis mission roles and responsibilities to specific divisions in response to a study finding; however, the agency has not clearly documented how it determined what key programmatic and technical tools it plans to use to guide mission decision-making. Without doing so, NASA cannot ensure that it has the appropriate processes in place to track how the missions will achieve objectives and address risks at the mission level.

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20 responses to “GAO: NASA Lunar Programs: Significant Work Remains”

  1. Todd Austin says:
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    I expect that NASA see the 2024 date as a bargaining chip. They don’t want to abandon it voluntarily, because it provides leverage for asking for more funding. As long as it appears that SpaceX has some chance of meeting that date, NASA can use the date to push for adequate funding to get the rest of the system in place.

  2. ExNASA says:
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    Can someone layout the number of launches to achieve a landing on the moon and return. Which rockets. How many, with what cadence.

    • fcrary says:
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      As currently planned, it would be three SLS/Orion launches, one without crew, one with a crew but only going around the Moon (not even entering orbit) and one to get the Artemis III astronauts to the NRHO L1 orbit. Then there would be two SpaceX HLS (modified Starship) landings, one without crew and one with the Artemis III astronauts, who would board after docking at the NRHO orbit. In addition, the HLS spacecraft would require refueling in low Earth orbit, which would take something like five Starship tanker flights each. So I guess it’s three SLS/Orion, two HLS Starship and perhaps ten Starship tanker flights. The schedule for all that is far from clear.

      • ExNASA says:
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        And that has to be done twice, once manned and once unmanned… Is it just me (and I admire Space X don’t get me wrong) or does that sound like a stretch for everything to go swimmingly.. Also, that doesn’t bring the starship back from lunar orbit either it would seem.. The crazy thing is it almost makes more sense to go to Mars at that point (which Starship is really designed for) then to go to that much risk for a single lunar mission… We consider Mars Rover’s complex and sample return even moreso, but 13 flights of 3 different vehicles for a single lunar mission….

        • Steve Pemberton says:
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          One advantage with lunar is that if there is a delay of say four months with one of the operations, then that creates a delay of four months in the project. But for Mars a similar delay can result in an actual delay to the project of more than two years. That is oversimplified as logistics and dependencies come into play in both scenarios, but still generally speaking it’s a lot easier to learn and perfect complex interdependent missions closer to home where there isn’t such a severe punishment to the overall schedule when individual items take longer than expected.

        • fcrary says:
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          No, it wouldn’t have to be done twice. Let be break it out more specifically:
          Artemis I: One SLS/Orion launch without crew
          Artemis II: One SLS/Orion launch with crew but without landing on the Moon (or even entering lunar orbit)
          HLS demo: One lunar Starship and five (or so) tanker Starship launches. All without crew, but with a lunar landing.
          Artemis III: One lunar Starship and five (or so) tanker Starship launches (without crew) followed by one SLS/Orion launch (with crew) for a lunar landing with crew.

          The first three (Artemis I and II and HLS demo), are necessary to test and demonstrate the systems. Just as Apollo 4 through 10 were necessary to test and demonstrate the systems before the Apollo 11 landing.

          And SpaceX has come up with a way to minimize the risks from all those tanker launches and propellent transfers. That’s part of why their proposal was rated as well as it was. The first tanker is used as a temporary propellent depot. The subsequent tankers fill its tanks. So, up to that point, things can go wrong and the worst consequence is delays and extra cost. If they lose a tanker, they just have to send up another. It’s only then that they launch the lunar Starship, and fill its tanks in a single propellent transfer. And then send it to the L1 NRHO orbit. Only once it’s there would the SLS/Orion launch happen, so no crew would be involved until the lunar Starship is already on that halo orbit and waiting. Then there’s a crew transfer in NRHO, the trip to the surface and then back to NRHO, a crew transfer back to Orion, and a return to Earth.

          A SpaceX Mars mission would require five (or so) tanker and one Mars Starship launch, without crew. Perhaps repeating those six launches at least once. They’re still going to need one or two flights without crew to test and demonstrate the systems. That would be followed by another set of tanker launches plus a Mars Starship with crew, and the extra requirement to produce propellent for the return trip on Mars. I’d call that comparable to the NASA plans for Artemis in terms of complexity, just without needing SLS/Orion and with in situ propellent production on Mars.

    • gunsandrockets says:
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      That all depends. How many for the first landing? Or how many for each subsequent landing? The NASA plan as of May 2021? Or an idealized plan?

      Ideally, each manned lunar landing would use four Falcon Heavy launches per year. The first lunar landing would need a total of six Falcon Heavy launches.

      The first landing might only be two people on the surface for six days. Stay times gradually build up to 3 people for six months. One Falcon Heavy launch of each mission cycle is dedicated to preposition ever more cargo and supplies on the Moon.

      Sadly for NASA, the core expense and main problem of Project Artemis is the slow-developing and too-expensive SLS rocket. But Congress and ex-Senator Bill Nelson are locked into a fatal embrace with their SLS problem child.

  3. TLE_Unknown says:
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    “With the current budget process and timelines, does anyone seriously believe a human landing will happen in 2024 anymore?” …. No!
    Not under Nelson, sorry I mean “Senator, Astronaut, Administrator Nelson”. He is already hedging this against other stated top priorities of climate change research and agency workforce diversification (with some ambivalence as to direction and scope of these efforts). Requesting more funding will do little to ameliorate the Artemis/HLS issues moving forward to meet an unrealistic (and dishonest) deadline. I seriously doubt that the end of this decade is possible.

    • PsiSquared says:
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      Under no one would NASA meet the 2024 deadline.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      I have to think that at some point, SpaceX is going to want to test their hardware by landing on the Moon, regardless of where NASA stands with Artemis. It will be interesting to see how that gets sorted out. (Call the SpX mission Artemis I? Change Artemis into a lunar exploration program and drop the whole ‘first woman, first person of color, first… thing?)

      • ed2291 says:
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        Yes! A fully refueled Starship in orbit could go to the moon AND come back to earth. Just landing a supply lunar Starship on the moon would be even easier.

  4. james w barnard says:
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    Aw, just let Elon do it!

  5. ed2291 says:
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    “Does anyone seriously believe a human landing will happen in 2024 anymore?”
    No, but non-crewed supply Starships to the moon and to Mars in 2024 is still a remote possibility.

    For the moon, just get rid of the NASA impediments. A fully refueled Starship in orbit could go to the moon AND come back to earth. Just landing a supply lunar Starship on the moon would be easier.

    (Yes, I am an optimist.)

    • fcrary says:
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      Just to be clear, that’s a low Earth orbit directly to the lunar surface (no stop in lunar orbit) and then back directly from the lunar surface to Earth (no stop in low Earth orbit.) And even then, the lunar Starship would probably have a reduced payload capacity (e.g. 50 tonnes rather then 100 tonnes.)

  6. Jack says:
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    “Does anyone seriously believe a human landing will happen in 2024 anymore?”
    What do you mean anymore?
    Did anyone seriously believe it would happen when that goal was first set?
    I sure didn’t.

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      I remember at the time that if you took a position that 2024 was unrealistic you tended to get challenged by people who thought that it was entirely possible. Of course possible and plausible are two different things, and that’s where there was definitely a difference of opinion during the first few months after the goal was announced. Although over time it seemed that even the optimists began to realize that meeting the 2024 goal was becoming increasingly unlikely, even if it was still the official goal.

  7. Brian_M2525 says:
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    I do not foresee NASA being able to organize and develop the systems for a Moon landing. Congressman/Senator/Administrator Nelson does not understand this. When he flew there had been continuity in expertise from Mercury through Apollo and into Shuttle. Nelson had been supported by people who mostly knew what they were doing. After Challenger NASA turned much of the systems expertise over to the USA contractor. At that point longevity of expertise was lost and has never been regained.