An independent report, investigating the development of the new SLS moon rocket from the Artemis Program of the POThas found Significant cost overruns and delays that could hurt the agency’s plans to get astronauts back to the Moon.
According to a 50 page report of NASA Inspector General Paul Martin, released by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) on May 25, the four contracts for the rocket engine and propellant were initially projected to cost $7 billion over 14 years. , but are now projected to cost at least $13.1 billion over nearly 25 years.
as you remember Spacedevelopment of the Space Launch System (SLS) began in November 2011. It had a successful test flight in November 2022, six years after its first debut launch in late 2016.
The SLS megarocket is intended to return humans to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program, but cost increases related to contracts awarded to Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman for SLS propulsion systems could threaten that goal.
Report Details
The report explains: “NASA continues to experience significant range growth, cost increases, and schedule delays for its RS-25 engine and booster contracts, resulting in approximately $6 billion in cost increases and more than six years in schedule delays above original NASA projections”.
These significant increases were caused by a variety of longstanding interrelated management issues that affected both the SLS development drive and the broader Artemis program, the report notes, including “some of which represent potential violations of federal contracting requirements”.
The use of legacy RS-25 engines and boosters from the Space Shuttle and Constellation programs for the new SLS rocket was intended to result in significant cost and schedule savings in the development of new systems. But the “complexity of developing, upgrading, and integrating new systems alongside heritage components turned out to be much greater than anticipated.”
The assessment still finds the enormous cost of SLS unwieldy for NASA and detrimental to its long-term plans: “Without increased attention to these important safeguards, NASA and its contracts will continue to exceed planned cost and schedule, resulting in reduced funding availability, launch delays, and the erosion of public confidence in the ability of the agency to responsibly spend taxpayer dollars and meet mission goals and objectives, including the return to the Moon and then the Mars plans”.