In a pair of new reports, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns about the costs and schedules for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) and Orion spacecraft, the three components of its Exploration Systems Development program. SLS and EGS cost and schedule reserves are low enough to imperil the November 2018 commitment date for the SLS first launch, GAO concludes in one report. In the other, it asserts that cost and schedule estimates for Orion failed to meet more than half of the “best practices” for creating such estimates, making them unreliable.

In the first report, NASA Human Space Exploration: Opportunity Nears to Reassess Launch Vehicle and Ground Systems Cost and Schedule, GAO looked at two components of the program: SLS and EGS. The latter are the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center needed to support SLS and Orion. The congressional watchdog agency is primarily concerned with cost and schedule reserves to deal with known and unknown risks as the programs move forward.

The SLS program “has not positioned itself well to provide accurate assessments of core stage progress–including forecasting impending schedule delays, cost overruns, and anticipated costs at completion–because at the time of our review it did not anticipate having the baseline to support full reporting on the core stage contract until summer 2016–some 4.5 years after NASA awarded the contract.”

As for EGS, constrained cost and schedule reserves threaten the November 2018 launch readiness goal and a scheduled integrated design review (IDR) will “have limited discussion of cost and schedule.” GAO recommended that NASA “reevaluate cost and schedule reserves” as part of the IDR. The GAO report was released July 27, but apparently was written earlier since it refers to the IDR, scheduled for June 2016, as planned for the future.

A separate “build-to-synchronization” review of how all three elements of the program — SLS, Orion and EGS –will come together for the first launch, Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), is planned for the summer of 2016 and GAO wants NASA to use that as an opportunity to realistically assess whether November 2018 is achievable. “NASA does not have to meet a specific schedule window for its launch date as it often does with planetary missions. As a result, NASA is in the position of being able to make an informed decision about what is a realistic launch readiness date.”

The second report, Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle: Action Needed to Improve Visibility into Cost, Schedule, and Capacity to Resolve Technical Challenges, concludes that NASA’s cost and schedule estimates for the Orion program are “not reliable based on best practices for producing high quality estimates.”

“GAO found that the Orion cost estimate met or substantially met 7 of 20 best practices and its schedule estimate met or substantially met 1 of 8 best practices. For example, the cost estimate lacked necessary support and the schedule estimate did not include the level of detail required for high quality estimates.”

EM-1 will launch an uncrewed version of Orion. The first Orion with a crew is scheduled for EM-2. NASA provided cost and schedule estimates for Orion following its Key Decision Point-C (KDP-C) review last year, a milestone at which the agency commits to a baseline cost and schedule against which the program will be measured by Congress and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). KDP-C reviews use a Joint Confidence Level (JCL) process to set the cost and schedule with a 70 percent confidence level meaning there is a 70 percent chance that it will come in on that cost and schedule and a 30 percent chance that it will not.

Following the KDP-C review, NASA committed to launching EM-2 in April 2023, a 20-month slip from its original plan, with a cost estimate of $11.3 billion. It was the JCL used for the KDP-C review that GAO found did not meet many of the best practices needed for reliable estimates.

Although NASA committed to launching EM-2 in 2023, the agency continues to work towards an internal deadline of August 2021, the original date, with a cost estimate of $10.8 billion. GAO reports that cost and schedule estimate has only a 40 percent confidence level and NASA is focused on it despite NASA’s own policy “that funding for program internal goals … in no case [be] less than the equivalent of a 50 percent confidence level.” In addition, NASA is requesting funding at the level to meet the April 2023 date and relying “on Congress to appropriate more funds than requested to stay on its internal Orion schedule” which may be “unrealistic.”

GAO cites a number of challenges facing the Orion program, including late delivery of the spacecraft’s Service Module for EM-1 (the uncrewed test flight), which is being provided by the European Space Agency (ESA), and notes that formal agreement has not yet been reached with ESA on the Service Module for EM-2. ESA is providing the EM-1 Service Module not under contract to NASA, but as part of a barter arrangement involving the NASA-ESA partnership in the International Space Station program. The EM-2 Service Module is an option under the barter arrangement, but formal agreement is not expected until December 2016. Orion program officials are tracking the EM-2 service module “as one of the largest cost risks facing the program,” potentially $200 million, GAO asserts.

Other risks in the Orion program are the use of Orbital Maneuvering System engines from the space shuttle program that need to be re-qualified since the Orion operating environment is quite different from the shuttle’s; heatshield design; software development and testing; a “bow wave” of deferred work; and potential cost overruns by Orion’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin. GAO states the prime contractor is “falling behind schedule, and work is costing more than originally estimated.” GAO concluded that Orion “faces a potential cost overrun of between $258 million and $707 million through the end of the current contract in December 2020,” although Orion program officials told GAO there are sufficient reserves to cover that cost growth. GAO warns, however, that some of those reserves may be needed to cover cost growth from other risks.

GAO recommended that NASA update its JCL analysis using best practices and perform an analysis of the cost of deferred work. In written comments included in the report, NASA responded that it regularly reviews Orion performance metrics and an updated JCL analysis is not warranted, but agreed to look at the cost of deferred work.