From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Nasa Quick Look

Description: NASA plans to invest over $83 billion in its major projects
to continue exploring Earth, the moon, and the solar system. In the last
year, NASA decreased the total overruns for its projects by almost $5
billion.  NASA has identified opportunities to improve the performance
of existing and future major projects. 

NASA's acquisition management is on our High Risk list. 

Related GAO Works: GAO-23-106021, NASA: Assessments of Major Projects

Released: May 2023

[William Russell, Director, Contracting and National Security
Acquisitions, speaking] It's an exciting time for NASA

[Voice over, speaking] And lift off! 

[William Russell, Director, Contracting and National Security
Acquisitions, speaking] as they're there working to ultimately return
humans to the moon.  There are a lot of systems that are in development.
For example, the human landing system, which is going to be the eagle
has landed part of the mission that Space X is developing, as well as
the Orion crew capsule, some of the other systems that are going to be
needed. We're taking a look at how all those projects are actually
adhering to their cost goals.  Are they being delivered on time and are
you getting the performance that was expected when these programs were
created? One of the exciting projects that we've been looking at is the
low boom flight demonstrator. So if you think about the Concorde, right,
being able to go faster than the speed of sound, that project is
attempting to do that, but in a much quieter way, if the technology is
demonstrated effectively, you could see commercial airlines being able
to go above the speed of sound.  What we found in this past assessment
is that NASA's doing a better job in terms of managing the overall
portfolio. So progress made challenges remain. Right now, it's estimated
about 83 billion is needed to complete the 34 projects that we're
examining. That's a lot of taxpayer dollars and effort. We want to make
sure that those dollars are spent wisely, that the capabilities that are
delivered on time and ultimately that we have a success in doing big
things like returning astronauts to the moon and exploring Mars.

[ End ]

For more info, check out our report GAO-23-106021 at: GAO.gov