Cost, schedule overruns threaten US moon mission, experts tell Congress

WASHINGTON (CN) — A group of aerospace experts told lawmakers Wednesday that NASA’s latest attempt to put American astronauts on the moon could remain grounded if the agency can’t provide transparent cost estimates or a realistic schedule for the mission.

NASA is eyeing a return to the moon via the Artemis program, established in 2017 with the goal of laying the groundwork for a long-term base on Earth’s only satellite. The program took a step towards that goal with a 2022 mission, which put an uncrewed space capsule into lunar orbit.

The U.S. space agency last week delayed the proposed launch date for the second Artemis mission, a crewed test flight around the moon, to September 2025. A Moon landing mission, known as Artemis III, was moved to 2026.

Even with these delays, putting humans on the lunar surface within two years could truly be a moonshot for NASA, some experts warned members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology during a hearing Wednesday.

An ambitious schedule and delays in key equipment testing make a 2025 test flight unlikely, said William Russell, director of the Government Accountability Office’s contracting and national security acquisitions division.

Citing a November GAO report, Russell contended that if the Artemis program took as long to complete as other NASA projects, the proposed Artemis III landing would not occur until at least 2027.

NASA also had no plans to establish a cost estimate for the program, Russell added, and has yet to draft one despite GAO recommendations that they do so.

“[D]ecision makers will have limited knowledge into the full scope of the Artemis III mission’s costs until an estimate is created,” he said.

George Scott, NASA’s acting inspector general, concurred, saying that the lack of a transparent cost estimate will make it difficult for Congress “to make informed decisions about NASA's long-term funding needs.”

Scott pointed to projections from his office which found that total costs for the Artemis program between 2012 and 2025 could reach $93 billion. That figure does not include tens of billions of dollars spent in research and development, he said.

“Given these costs, it is imperative that NASA identify and effectively implement cost saving measures,” Scott said, acknowledging that while the agency has taken steps to cut spending, those efforts may not be enough, thanks in part to the lack of a solid framework for estimating costs.

NASA will also need to balance its financial needs with the imperative of astronaut safety, the acting inspector general continued, citing technical issues unearthed during the 2022 Artemis test flight such as heat-shielding erosion on the space capsule.

Russell further questioned whether NASA would have the time to address new technical challenges posed by the scheduled 2025 test flight.

“As you saw with Artemis I, there are things that are going to happen that you need to investigate,” he said. “One year is not a lot of time to do that learning and to turn around and be ready for a September 2026 launch date.”

Michael Griffin, co-founder of technology consulting firm LogiQ and former undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, put things more bluntly.

“In my judgment,” Griffin said, “the Artemis program is excessively complex, unrealistically priced, compromises crew safety, poses very high mission risk of completion and is highly unlikely to be completed in a timely manner, even if successful.”

Congress should force NASA to make commitments about the Artemis program’s life cycle costs and schedule, he told lawmakers.

“We can understand that the world is complex, and things will change,” Griffin said. “But it's incredibly important for Congress to at least have an initial idea of what this is going to cost them.”

Meanwhile, NASA Associate Administrator Catherine Koerner told lawmakers that the scheduling delays were designed to give engineers more time to review potential safety issues that the Artemis I mission revealed.

“There is a margin built into that schedule for us to complete all of the necessary testing and to address all of the regular processing of lessons learned from the Artemis I launch,” she said.

Koerner, who oversees systems management for the Artemis program, also explained the lack of a mission cost estimate by pointing out that NASA receives federal appropriations to buy equipment for all of its programs in bulk from government contractors such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Such a mechanism makes it difficult to put together a cost analysis specifically for the Artemis program, she said, but added that NASA is “very transparent in the cost numbers that we have, with the contract structures that we have in place and with the way that we are appropriated.”

In addition to its plans to put a long-term human presence on the moon, NASA’s Artemis program is also designed to support the eventual construction of a lunar space station, known as Gateway. The agency has said that the Gateway station could eventually be used to facilitate manned missions to Mars.

NASA planned to launch the first parts of that installation in 2025 but said last week that it is now reviewing that schedule.

The U.S. hasn’t landed astronauts on the moon in more than 50 years. The last Apollo mission touched down on the lunar surface in December 1972.

Follow @BenjaminSWeiss

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Email *

Submit