“The program has made progress, but the Artemis schedule poses challenges. Artemis II and III launches (planned for September 2025 and 2026, respectively): EGS is making progress refurbishing the Mobile Launcher 1 – the structure used to transport and launch key systems – and modifying elements to support crew during these missions. New capabilities are taking longer than planned, and the program has only limited time to address potential issues. Artemis IV launch (planned for September 2028): EGS has made some progress toward this mission, such as modifying facilities to accommodate processing and launching the larger Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1B launch vehicle. However, much work remains, some of which cannot start until after the Artemis III launch.” Full report NASA Artemis Missions: Exploration Ground Systems Program Could Strengthen Schedule Decisions

Keith’s note: From GAO: “Two pieces of NASA’s Gateway program—the first space station to orbit the moon—are scheduled to launch together in 2027. NASA is taking steps to ensure Gateway will be ready. For example, the program plans to update a cost and schedule analysis that will help determine whether the launch date is feasible. But this program also faces some significant challenges. For example, the mass of the pieces is too high. So, if it isn’t reduced, they might not be able to reach the correct lunar orbit once launched. We recommended documenting the Gateway program’s plans to address this issue to help ensure it can meet the planned launch date.” Full report: Artemis Programs: NASA Should Document and Communicate Plans to Address Gateway’s Mass Risk

Keith’s note: according to GAO Report Open Recommendations: National Aeronautics and Space Administration: “Since our May 2023 letter, NASA has implemented four of our nine open priority recommendations. … We ask your continued attention to the remaining five priority recommendations. We are not adding any new recommendations this year:

• To provide the Congress with the necessary insight into program affordability, ensure its ability to effectively monitor total program costs and execution, and facilitate investment decisions, the NASA Administrator should direct the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate to establish a separate cost and schedule baseline for work required to support the Space Launch System (SLS) Block I Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2) and report this information to the Congress through NASA’s annual budget submission.11 If NASA decides to fly the SLS Block I beyond EM-2, NASA should establish separate life-cycle cost and schedule baseline estimates for those efforts, to include funding for operations and sustainment, and report this information annually to Congress via the agency’s budget submission.
• To provide the Congress with the necessary insight into program planning and affordability, and to decrease the risk of cost and schedule overruns, NASA’s Administrator should direct the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate to identify a range of possible missions for each future SLS variant that includes cost and schedule estimates and plans for how those possible missions would fit within NASA’s funding profile.
• The NASA Administrator should ensure that the NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations creates a life-cycle cost estimate for the Artemis III mission.
• The Administrator of NASA should fully define and document the role of the senior agency official for privacy or other designated privacy official in reviewing and approving system categorizations, overseeing privacy control assessments, and reviewing authorization packages.
• The NASA Administrator should ensure the NASA Senior Procurement Executive uses a balanced set of performance metrics to manage the agency’s procurement organizations, including outcome-oriented metrics to measure (a) cost savings/avoidance, (b) timeliness of deliveries, (c) quality of deliverables, and (d) end-user satisfaction.”

“Since 2023, NASA’s cumulative cost and schedule performance has improved. Cost overruns decreased from $7.6 billion in 2023 to $4.4 billion in 2024. Schedule overruns decreased from a total of 20.9 years in 2023 to 14.5 years in 2024. These decreases are primarily because two projects, the Space Launch System and Exploration Ground Systems, demonstrated their initial capability and left the portfolio. Previously, these projects accounted for $3.6 billion in cost overruns and each experienced delays of 4 years. … Regardless of their category, most of the projects in development did not experience annual cost growth or schedule delays since 2023. Specifically, 11 out of the 16 major projects in development did not experience cost growth in 2024, and 13 out of the 16 reported no schedule delays this year. … Five of the 16 projects experienced cost growth since our last report, which increased the development portfolio’s estimated overruns by $476.6 million. … In March 2024, NASA announced that it was canceling OSAM-1, a category 1 project with a history of poor cost and schedule performance. … NASA delayed setting cost and schedule baselines for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, a category 1 project with a potential life-cycle cost of $8 billion to $11 billion.” Full report

Keith’s note: According to GAO: “NASA has made progress demonstrating key capabilities needed to support its Artemis missions. …Despite this progress, NASA still faces several challenges:”

• Ambitious schedules. In November 2023 (GAO-24-106256), GAO found that the Artemis III lunar landing was unlikely to occur in December 2025, as planned, given delays and remaining technical work. In January 2024, NASA adjusted the launch date to September 2026 to allow contractors time to complete a significant amount of remaining complex work.
• Artemis III mission cost. In December 2019 (GAO-20-68), GAO found that NASA did not plan to establish an official cost estimate for this mission. NASA concurred with a GAO recommendation to establish one but has not yet done so. While NASA requested $6.8 billion to support Artemis III programs in its fiscal year 2024 budget request, decision-makers have limited knowledge into the full scope of Artemis III mission costs.
• Acquisition management. NASA’s largest, most complex projects, including those that support the Artemis missions, continue to shape the agency’s portfolio. When these projects exceed their cost baselines and require cost reserves to meet their funding needs, it has a cascading effect on other projects. NASA officials are exploring ways to better manage this project cost and schedule growth.

According to the GAO: “The commercial space industry is rapidly growing as private companies transport cargo, satellites, and people to space. But not all launches go smoothly. Some have exploded or otherwise failed, which can endanger the public. Usually, FAA is responsible for finding out what caused such mishaps. Although FAA can investigate a mishap itself, it has always opted to authorize the launch operator to investigate under agency supervision. But FAA doesn’t have criteria to determine when to authorize an operator to investigate its own mishap, nor has it evaluated how effective its investigation process is. We recommended that FAA address these issues.” Full Report

Keith’s note: according to a new GAO report “Cybersecurity: Federal Agencies Made Progress, but Need to Fully Implement Incident Response Requirements“: “The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should ensure that the agency fully implements all event logging requirements as directed by OMB guidance. (Recommendation 17)” … “In written comments, reprinted in appendix XI, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration concurred with our recommendation and stated that it plans to address our recommendation by, among other things, creating a comprehensive plan to address all event logging requirements under a recently established Cybersecurity Improvement Portfolio. It also noted certain challenges it faces, such as data integration into the agency’s uniquely designed systems and resource constraints.” [Note: NASA’s response is on pages 63-64]. Previous NASA IT posts

Keith’s note: According to GAO: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is preparing to land humans on the moon for the first time since 1972 in a mission known as Artemis III. Since GAO’s September 2022 report (GAO-22-105323), NASA and its contractors have made progress, including completing several important milestones, but they still face multiple challenges with development of the human landing system and the space suits. As a result, GAO found that the Artemis III crewed lunar landing is unlikely to occur in 2025. In July 2023, NASA stated that it is reviewing the Human Landing System schedule.

Keith’s note: According to a GAO report issued today: “Space Launch System: Cost Transparency Needed to Monitor Program Affordability“: “Because the original SLS version’s cost and schedule commitments, or baselines, were tied to the launch of Artemis I, ongoing production and other costs needed to sustain the program going forward are not monitored. Instead, NASA created a rolling 5-year estimate of production and operations costs to ensure that the costs fit within NASA’s overall budget. However, neither the estimate nor the annual budget request track costs by Artemis mission or for recurring production items. As a result, the 5-year estimate and the budget requests are poor measures of cost performance over time. In 2014, GAO recommended that NASA develop a cost baseline that captures production costs for the missions beyond Artemis I that fly SLS Block I. NASA intends to fly SLS Block I for Artemis II, planned for 2024, and Artemis III, planned for 2025. NASA partially concurred, but has not yet implemented this recommendation. A cost baseline would increase the transparency of ongoing costs associated with SLS production and provide necessary insights to monitor program affordability.” Here are More posts in the continuing saga of what SLS actually costs. As if NASA will ever actually know who much these things cost. Why start now?

GAO Report: Priority Open Recommendations: NASA “What GAO Found In June 2021, GAO identified 11 priority recommendations for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Since then, NASA has implemented four of those recommendations by, among other things, establishing a process for aggregating and assessing cyber risk information from across NASA, and approving an updated cost and schedule baseline for the second test flight of the Orion crew vehicle for […]