Source: United States Government Accountability Office
Synopsis
NASA plans to invest more than $83 billion in its 2023 portfolio of 34 major projects, which is defined as those projects or programs with a lifecycle cost of over $250 million. The goals of these projects include exploring Earth and the solar system, extending human presence beyond low-Earth orbit to the lunar surface, and understanding climate change, among other things. This report provides an overview of NASA’s planning and execution of these major acquisitions-an area that has been on GAO’s high-risk list since 1990. It includes assessments of NASA’s key projects across mission areas, such as the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (Orion) for human exploration; Europa Clipper for planetary science; Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) for Earth science; and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) for astrophysics.
