MELBOURNE, Fla. — A federal watchdog agency tasked with government spending oversight took aim again at NASA’s multibillion-dollar Space Launch System rocket, the backbone of the agency’s lunar-focused Artemis program.
The report, released last week, criticized NASA’s lack of transparency and tracking of production cost overruns as reasons why the agency’s SLS rocket program doesn’t offer long-term sustainability or affordability. It also laid out NASA’s short-term plans to reign in the costs of the world’s most powerful rocket.
Senior NASA officials agreed, admitting to the U.S. Government Accountability Office “that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable.”
Artemis is NASA’s flagship attempt to return U.S. astronauts to the moon and establish a long-term human presence as a stepping stone before venturing onto Mars. The successful uncrewed Artemis I demo flight, which launched last November from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carved a path for Artemis II with a crew of four to launch sometime late next year.
It will mark the first time humans will venture beyond low Earth orbit since 1972.
NASA’s poor tools: Estimation and lack of oversight
The Government Accountability Office listed two major concerns about the cost of the Space Launch System: NASA needs to do a better job of providing consistent transparency and oversight of production costs, and the agency needs to move away from an old contracting structure that saddles the government with too much…
