NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report today that identifies four major challenges that cause NASA programs to experience cost overruns and delays.   Solving these challenges will require strong and consistent leadership from the President, Congress and NASA managers, the report stresses.

After interviewing 85 people inside and outside the agency and obtaining input from other NASA employees through an internal blog, the OIG identified in its report the following major NASA program management challenges:

• NASA’s Culture of Optimism Can Result in Unrealistic Projections
• Underestimating Technical Complexity Increases Cost and Schedule Risk
• Funding Instability Can Lead to Inefficient Management Practices
• Project Manager Development Opportunities are Limited

The report offers examples in each area to demonstrate on a practical level how programs are impacted by these challenges.   In the funding instability area, for example, it cites both external (presidential and congressional) and internal decisions that can wreak havoc with a program manager’s schedule that may be well crafted initially.  “[F]unding instability can create a cycle of perpetual funding shortfalls by triggering schedule delays and program inefficiencies, which in turn lead to additional costs and greater risks,” the report says.  When funding is insufficient in one program, the agency may take money from another, exacerbating the problem.  “For example, NASA leadership took funds from the budgets of other programs and projects to cover cost overruns and schedule delays in the Constellation Program, JWST [James Webb Space Telescope], and MSL [Mars Science Laboratory].”

As one example of funding instability, the report highlights the challenges of managing programs when the agency is funded under a Continuing Resolution (CR) rather than getting an appropriation bill enacted prior to the beginning of the new fiscal year.   The report then graphically shows how NASA has received its annual appropriation at the beginning of a fiscal year only seven times since the agency was created in 1959.  Sometimes the delay was only days, but in others it was many months.

NASA will be operating under a CR for the first half of FY2013.

The OIG gives NASA credit for changes it already has made, such as using the Joint Cost and Schedule Confidence Level (JCL) probabilistic analysis, issuing a Corrective Action Plan in response to a 2007 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, and requiring that “project plans document baseline and threshold values for performance metrics to be achieved at each key decision point (KDP) and mission success criteria associated with the program-level requirements that, if not met, trigger consideration of a Termination Review.”  The report also says that NASA appears to be holding program managers more responsible as evidenced by the recent decision not to confirm the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism (GEMS) project because of cost growth. 

The only way to solve NASA’s program management challenges is through leadership, the report concludes:  “In our judgment, meeting the challenges outlined in this report can only be realized through a ‘unity of effort’ that includes strong, consistent, and sustained leadership by the President, Congress and NASA management.”

In a written response published as an appendix, NASA Chief Engineer Mike Ryschkewitsch says NASA “generally concurs” with the OIG’s assessment and points to improvements the agency already is making.  He also defends some of NASA’s practices, however.  “NASA believes that the culture of optimism is necessary to successfully accomplish the challenging tasks the Nation has asked of us,” he writes, adding that “We also recognize that sufficient checks and balances must be in place to ensure that we have realistic plans when we begin execution.”  In summary, Ryschkewitsch says “NASA recognizes that the continuing refinement, improvement, and implementation of sound acquisition practices, policies and processes are essential to mission success.” 

Editor’s Note:  In the interest of full disclosure, I was one of the 85 people interviewed by OIG for this report.

 

 

A bill passed by the House and Senate to clarify that astronauts can keep certain items from their spaceflights like personal logs and checklists was signed into law yesterday.

The bill, H.R. 4158, was introduced by House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Ralph Hall (R-TX).   In a statement today, Hall commended the bipartisanship that allowed the bill to quickly clear Congress and become law.  The bill affects astronauts who flew in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs in the 1960s and 1970s.   Hall stated today:  “As I said on the House floor, these men are heroes who took extraordinary risks to establish American preeminence in space, and by doing so helped our country become a world leader.”

The House passed the bill on September 19 and the Senate on September 22. 

The astronauts still will not own Moon rocks or other lunar material gathered on their flights.  That remains the property of the U.S. Government.

Clarification:   The interpretation of the House rules discussed in this article was adopted by the House Republican Conference as part of its Rule 14.  The wording of some of the sentences in this article have been modified to reflect that document.

House rules limit committee chairs to serving six years in that position, but they are being interpreted to include service as ranking member as well.  That means Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) would not continue as chair of the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee in the 113th Congress if Republicans retain control of the House.  The question then is who would replace him.

The chairs of congressional committees are from whatever party controls that chamber.  When Republicans regained control of the House  for the 112th Congress, they adopted rules that set term limits for committee chairs similar to the rules they imposed when they last controlled the House.   Rule X(5)(c)(2) says “except in the case of the Committee on Rules, a member of a standing committee may not serve as chair of the same standing committee, or of the same subcommittee of a standing committee, during more than three consecutive Congresses….”   A Congress lasts two years, so that’s a term limit of six years.

Under a strict interpretation of that House rule, Hall could remain as chair since he has served in that position for only one Congress.   However, when Democrats controlled the House in the 110th and 111th Congresses, he was the ranking member on the committee.  Ranking member is the top leadership position on a committee for the party that is not in control.  That totals six consecutive years as the top Republican on HSS&T.  The House Republican Conference adopted its own Rule 14 that includes time served as ranking member as well as chair in the term limit.  Therefore, even though none of the current committee chairs has served more than one Congress in those positions, seven are term-limited, including Hall.

Politico reports this morning that Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is mostly likely to take the chair position on House SS&T; he has reached his own term limit as chair of the Judiciary Committee.   Politico says another contender for the HSS&T chair position is Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), currently HSS&T’s vice chair.   Sensenbrenner served four years (1997-2001) as chair of HSS&T, when it was called the House Science Committee, where he frequently clashed with then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin.  

Smith and Sensenbrenner both are co-sponsors of H.R. 6491, the Space Leadership Preservation Act introduced last week that would change NASA’s governance structure and make the NASA Administrator a 10-year appointed position. 

Committee chairs are selected by their caucus as a new Congress begins.  With the elections just a few weeks away, jockeying for position already has begun.  Of course one must await the outcome of the elections to see if Republicans retain control of the House.  Many Washington pundits are expecting they will, but nothing is certain until the elections are over.

NASA has posted the summary of the Mars Program Planning Group’s (MPPG’s) report.  More details were provided to the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS) today at its meeting in Irvine, CA and at a NASA media teleconference this afternoon.

The summary turns out to be the briefing slides MPPG head Orlando Figueroa presented to CAPS.  NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) head John Grunsfeld said during the media teleconference that it is “not a plan,” but options and strategies.  The full report will be ready in mid-late October, Grunsfeld added.

Figueroa and his team were tasked with developing “foundations for a program-level architecture” for NASA’s exploration of Mars combining the goals of the planetary science community as expressed in last year’s NRC Decadal Survey for planetary science and those of the human spaceflight side of NASA that is focused on meeting President Obama’s goal of sending astronauts to orbit Mars in the 2030s.

The science and human spaceflight parts of NASA historically view each other with suspicion.  During a question and answer session with the CAPS committee, Figueroa likened the situation to the elephant and the mouse, with each wary of the other.

The bottom line, however, is that today NASA’s human spaceflight program is on one track and the robotic Mars exploration program is on another despite the agency’s stated intentions to get the two to work more closely together.   Human spaceflight is focused on operating and utilizing the International Space Station until 2020 and perhaps until 2028 and sending humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to orbit Mars in the 2030s.  The robotic Mars exploration program is focused on operating four Mars probes in orbit around or on the surface of Mars (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, Opportunity and Curiosity), and launching another mission (MAVEN) next year and still another (Insight) in 2016.  The future of the robotic Mars program after that is uncertain following budget cuts that forced NASA to withdraw from cooperative missions with Europe in 2016 and 2018.  Those cuts prompted the creation of Figueroa’s MPPG.

As noted, Figueroa’s team was tasked with developing options that are responsive to the scientific goals expressed in the 2011 NRC planetary science Decadal Survey as well as the President’s directive to send people to orbit Mars in the 2030s.  The Decadal Survey’s top priority for large “flagship” missions was returning a sample from Mars.    MPPG concluded that a Mars sample return mission not only is a top science priority, but also a good opportunity to blend the science and human spaceflight parts of NASA.  For example, astronauts could collect a sample enroute back to Earth from Mars and ensure that it is safe enough to be brought to the surface without fear of planetary contamination.  Where the astronauts would be when they capture the sample — on the Intenational Space Station, on an asteroid rendezvous mission, in orbit around Mars, or somewhere else — is not clear from the summary.  A CAPS member questioned the need for astronauts to get involved in a sample return mission at all.  Indeed, the Mars sample return campaign in the Decadal Survey does not mention astronaut involvement in the return process.

For the near-term (2018-2024), the MPPG report presents four options for Mars rovers and four options for Mars orbiters and spells out the pros and cons of each.   For the rovers, one obstacle is cost.   As Grunsfeld said at the media teleconference, the best NASA is hoping for is $700-800 million for a new Mars mission that could be launched in 2018, a particularly good time to launch a Mars mission based on planetary alignments (probes can be launched to Mars every 26 months, but some opportunities are better than others depending on the relative positions of the two planets).  That is not enough money to build any of the rovers, whose pricetags start at over $1 billion.  Thus, NASA will have to choose between an orbiter for launch in 2018, or skip 2018 and hope it can accumulate the necessary money to build and launch one of the rovers in 2020 or later.   A complex series of trade-offs is necessary to make the decision.

When asked when a decision will be made, Grunsfeld said that NASA is in the process of submitting its FY2014 budget request to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).   What direction NASA chooses and that wins White House approval will not be publicly known until the budget is submitted to Congress in February 2013, he said. 

NASA planetary science division director Jim Green, who was at the CAPS meeting today, stressed during a question and answer session there that OMB is not interested in expensive “flagship” missions right now.  He had stressed that point earlier in the CAPS meeting as well during a discussion of studies related to a possible mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa.  He tried to keep the members of the planetary science community who comprise CAPS mindful of budget realities in Washington saying that there are no funds for a Europa mission right now despite the enthusiasm with which the studies were received by the group.

At the end of today’s media teleconference, Grunsfeld thanked Figueroa for his team’s “heroic” effort in completing MPPG’s work in just a few short months, but did not sound particularly optimistic about where it would lead.  Calling the MPPG “part of a process of developing a plan,” it seemed as though uncertainty remains the watchword on NASA’s future Mars exploration plans.

 

 

 

An update from NASA’s Office of Communications that is regularly sent to a list of email subscribers contains an intriguing sentence today.

After calling everyone’s attention to the Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG) report release this afternoon, it says “Also today, expect to hear announcements regarding management at a couple of [NASA] Centers.”

We’ll have our ear to the ground and will report whatever news we get as soon as possible.