Keith’s note: NASA has a Planetary Defense Program. They want to find asteroids that might pose a risk before they pose a threat. The other day the Vera Rubin Observatory released imagery of a variety of objects including 2,104 previously unknown asteroids discovered in just a few hours by this new instrument. NASA has ignored the Rubin observatory’s debut altogether while the rest of the world stopped to pay attention. This new NASA OIG report NASA’s Implementation and Management of Its Planetary Defense Strategy mentions Rubin as an option but does not ding the Planetary Defense Program for ignoring Rubin. Why is that? More below.

Keith’s 15 Nov note: NASA used to be plague by awful financial audits. Then it cleaned up its act. You’d think that such good news would be worthy of some smart media placement i.e. so the story can get into the publication process well before the deadlines are reached and maximum eyeballs can see it. Or maybe on the following Monday when it would have a week to be seen. Guess again. NASA sent this media release out at 5:27 pm EST today “NASA Receives 14th Consecutive ‘Clean’ Financial Audit Opinion“. As I post this 4.5 hours later NASA has still made no mention of the stealth news at @NASA for its 83.7 million followers. @NASAOIG posted a tweet at 5:23 pm for its 7,000 or so followers to see. No mention on the main home page at NASA.gov unless you know to dig for it. Here is the actual report. Again, this is good news, right Marc Etkind? Or are y’all just phoning things in now – since who cares? 18 Nov update: well @NASA just tweeted a link at 5:00 pm EST – thus losing one media day.

Keith’s note: According to a NASA OIG report NASA’s Management of Risks to Sustaining ISS Operations through 2030: “After more than a decade of effort, NASA and its partners continue to develop a transition and deorbit plan to prevent an operations gap in LEO and ensure a safe and controlled deorbit of the ISS. Russia has not committed to ISS operations through 2030, which includes the deorbit plan and timeline. Without commitment from Russia to the current deorbit plan, the ability to conduct a controlled deorbit is unclear. In June 2024, NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX to develop the U.S. deorbit vehicle to execute the controlled deorbit of the ISS in 2031. Nonetheless, the uncertainty of commercial LEO destination-readiness, limited budget availability, and the potential delay in availability of the U.S. deorbit vehicle adds more schedule challenges and risks to NASA’s 2031 deorbit plan.”

Keith’s note: according to the NASA OIG: “Much of NASA’s RPT infrastructure is aging and requires significant funding to maintain. Meanwhile, the landscape for RPT is changing. Increased commercialization in the space industry has lessened demand for NASA’s large-scale RPT facilities. NASA is also transferring some responsibility for payload delivery to commercial partners, such as in the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. These trends lead to NASA’s RPT stands sitting unused more often. From fiscal year (FY) 2022 to 2026, the percentage of NASA test stand capabilities in active use is projected to decrease from 47 percent to 26 percent. Of the 10 test stands projected for use in FY 2025, five are being leased to commercial entities. Five of the Program’s test stands are in mothball or demolition status, and Stennis’s A-2 and A-3 test stands sat idle for nearly a decade before being leased to external customers. In addition to decreased demand, the RPT Program is facing a flat budget, with enough funding to maintain core staff and facilities, but insufficient funding to address major maintenance projects.” Full report: NASA’s Rocket Propulsion Test Program

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

“As a test flight, Artemis I was used to examine how the integrated SLS and Orion and associated systems performed in their intended environment, allowing the Agency to confidently mitigate risks, certify system designs, and validate mission capabilities for future missions in the Artemis campaign. To this end, the Artemis I test flight revealed critical issues that need to be addressed before placing crew on the Artemis II mission. In particular, the test flight revealed anomalies with the Orion heat shield, separation bolts, and power distribution that pose significant risks to the safety of the crew. Resolution of these anomalies is among the most significant factors impacting NASA’s readiness for Artemis II. To its credit, the Agency is taking action to address these issues.” … “In particular, the test flight revealed anomalies with the Orion heat shield, separation bolts, and power distribution that pose significant risks to the safety of the crew.” Full report

Keith’s note: According to a late Friday blog post NASA said that it “has decided to discontinue the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) project due to continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges, and a broader community evolution away from refueling unprepared spacecraft, which has led to a lack of a committed partner.” Well, DUH. As if that was not already blatantly obvious. This is what NASA OIG said 6 months ago. “The spacecraft bus and SPIDER contracts are FFP with no incentive or award fee. Therefore, NASA lacks the flexibility to use monetary incentives to recognize and reward contractor performance that exceeds meeting basic contract requirements.” Double DUH. How many years and hundreds of millions did it take before NASA finally yielded to the obvious? That internal NASA review process itself ought be examined by OIG. Just sayin’.

• OSAM-1 cost growth and schedule delays are exacerbated by poor contractor performance and continued technical challenges. After rebaselining its cost and schedule in April 2022, the OSAM-1 project continues to experience cost growth and it now appears the Agency will exceed its current $2.05 billion price tag and the December 2026 launch date commitment to Congress. Development of the servicing payload—the system responsible for rendezvous and refueling Landsat 7—has continued to cost more and take longer than anticipated. Moreover, much of the project’s cost growth and schedule delays can be traced to Maxar’s poor performance on the spacecraft bus and SPIDER contracts with each deliverable approximately 2 years behind schedule. We found the structure of these FFP contracts does not provide NASA adequate flexibility to incentivize Maxar to improve its performance. Consequently, NASA is providing personnel and services to supplement Maxar’s efforts to mitigate contractor performance issues and reduce further impacts to the project’s cost and schedule. Additionally, because NASA continues to pay Landsat 7 operation costs through the on- orbit mission, extended launch delays for OSAM-1 will increase these costs as well.
• Due to Maxar’s poor performance, NASA is providing unplanned labor and services to supplement Maxar’s efforts to develop OSAM-1’s spacecraft bus. Specifically, between January 2022 and May 2023 NASA provided labor, such as assistance with flight software and systems engineering support, valued at approximately $2 million to help reduce impacts to the mission schedule. According to project officials, supplementing Maxar’s efforts was necessary to reduce risk to the overall project schedule. At the same time, Agency project managers have not modified the spacecraft bus contract to decrease its value to account for the supplemental labor provided by NASA. Instead of making the changes to the contract’s SOW with corresponding adjustments to the contract value, the project is tracking the supplemental government-provided labor using an informal document referred to by the project as a “puts and takes” list that describes the supplements to Maxar and their associated dollar values.
• The spacecraft bus and SPIDER contracts are FFP with no incentive or award fee. Therefore, NASA lacks the flexibility to use monetary incentives to recognize and reward contractor performance that exceeds meeting basic contract requirements. For example, the government uses award fees to motivate positive contractor performance, and conversely, these fees are not paid when a contractor’s overall cost, schedule, and technical performance is below satisfactory. In our discussions with senior leadership at Goddard, OSAM-1 Standing Review Board members, and procurement officials, each group agreed that the lack of an incentive or award fee on the contracts has limited NASA’s ability to improve contractor performance. According to the Standing Review Board Chair at the time of the mission’s Critical Design Review, the contract structure lacked the ability to incentivize the contractor’s performance, particularly in cases such as this where the contractor is not profiting from the contract due to its FFP nature and cost and schedule overruns. In our discussions with Maxar officials, they acknowledged that they were no longer profiting from their work on OSAM-1.

“In 2020, STMD began the Strategic Technology Architecture Roundtable (STAR) initiative to prioritize technology gaps within the Directorate’s portfolio. This process uses information from stakeholders to identify priority technology gaps that should be addressed in the near term. The first iteration of the STAR process took 2 years and culminated with the 2022 issuance of reports describing how STMD’s portfolio contributes to achieving 17 desired outcomes to close technology gaps related to commercial competitiveness as well as Moon, Mars, and future science missions.” Full report

Audit of Selected NASA Conferences in Fiscal Years 2011-2012, NASA OIG “NASA May Have Augmented its Appropriations at the 2011 IT Summit. Donations of goods and services by outside entities can lead to an augmentation of an agency’s appropriations and a violation of the Antideficiency Act unless they are authorized under a gift acceptance statute or other statutory authority. … The 2011 IT Summit steering committee members did not consult […]

Final Report – IG-13-016 – NASA’s Management of Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and ISS Commercial Resupply Contracts, NASA OIG “The OIG review found that despite an almost 3-year delay in development, SpaceX completed its demonstration flights and two resupply missions to the ISS. Although each experienced some anomalies, none was serious enough to substantially impact the missions.” “Similar to SpaceX, Orbital has experienced delays in its development program and these […]