From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: NASA Plans For 2024 Moon Landing Progress, But Still Face Challenges Description: NASA's plans to return American astronauts to the Moon have been accelerated by 4 years, moving from 2028 to 2024. Since then, NASA's efforts have faced management challenges as well as delays caused by the pandemic. We get an update on NASA's efforts and the challenges it faces from GAO's Bill Russell. Related GAO Work: GAO-21-330, NASA Lunar Programs: Significant Work Remains, Underscoring Challenges to Achieving Moon Landing in 2024 Released: May 2021 [Intro music:] [Bill Russell:] NASA has made progress, but there are significant challenges achieve the 2024 moon landing date. [Holly Hobbs:] Hi and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office celebrating 100 years of fact-based, nonpartisan government oversight. I'm Holly Hobbs. NASA has accelerated its plans to return American astronauts to the Moon by 4 years, moving from 2028 to 2024. Since then, NASA's efforts have faced management challenges as well as delays caused by the pandemic. Today will get an update on NASA's efforts from GAO's Bill Russell, an expert on NASA programs, and a director in our Contracting and National Security Acquisitions Team. Thank you for joining us Bill. [Bill Russell:] Thanks for having me, Holly. [Holly Hobbs:] So Bill, since accelerating its plan, what has NASA done to meet its new deadline? [Bill Russell:] Well, NASA has made progress by completing some early lunar program development activities, including some initial contract awards. For example, they've made progress developing the Gateway, which is going to be orbiting outpost around the Moon; also progress with the Viper Science project. That's a rover that's going to do some science missions exploring the lunar polar regions. But one of the tradeoffs NASA made to help make achieve the 2024 date is to really accelerate the schedule for some of these systems. The schedules are, in some cases, months faster than past space flight programs. These are also inherently complex systems, as you might imagine, since they are going to be used to support human spaceflight. So there are risks that these programs are not going to be able to complete development at the faster pace [Holly Hobbs:] And back in December, we talked and we did a podcast about NASA's plans for 2 test flights, which were important steps towards meeting the 2024 deadline. Can you give us an update on those flights? [Bill Russell:] Certainly. One of the key developments was the Space Launch System, which is the rocket that's going to be key for the early Artemis missions, was able to complete what's called its green run test. That was successfully completed in the spring. So that was that was a big milestone for efforts to get back to the Moon. [Holly Hobbs:] Americans last landed on the Moon in 1972. Shouldn't this be kind of old hat? Why is this still a challenge and what are we hoping to accomplish by going back again? [Bill Russell:] Well, space is a complex and dangerous environment. If anything goes wrong, it can be catastrophic. So one element is that we haven't done it in a while. So part of it is employing new techniques and new technologies in order to return to the Moon. And NASA has an ambitious agenda, not only to return astronauts to the moon, but to really create a continuing lunar presence on the Moon, with the ultimate goal to help facilitate human exploration of Mars. So there are a lot of complexities and a number of systems that has to be developed to do that. One good example is just coming up with a new version of what space suits should be. So things that might seem straightforward are not. Human landing system is a good example. So you know, what is the next generation of that look like? What are the new technologies that you can add to that system to give it a 21st century function. [Holly Hobbs:] So our report identified some management challenges. What should we know about those and their potential effects on the new deadline? [Bill Russell:] A couple of things the report notes is the fact that you have 8 or more lunar programs associated with the effort to go back to the Moon in 2024. So each one of those has unique elements in terms of potential requirements, gaps that they're going to discover as those projects go through development. Some of them have immature technology. So it's not clear if they're going to be ready in time. And all of that leads to some management decisions that will need to be made. For example, how do you want to assess impacts of changing requirements on one program and its impact on potentially another program? [Holly Hobbs:] And do we think or know whether NASA is going to meet that 2024 deadline? [Bill Russell:] It's very ambitious and at this point we're already into 2021. 2024 is not that far away. A lot is really going to have to go right over the next months and years to achieve it. [Music] [Holly Hobbs:] So it sounds like NASA is making progress towards its goal of returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024 and has recently completed some important steps, like test flights. But that we identified some management challenges that could affect NASA's efforts. Bill, did we make any recommendations to NASA to help meet the 2024 deadline? [Bill Russell:] We did. We made 4 recommendations. And--just to cover a couple of those--one was for NASA to really assess backup plans for how they're going to deal with immature technologies. For example, the Gateway is one of the lunar projects where it's basically an orbiting outpost around the moon, but it's using a propulsion system that is really new and novel--solar electric propulsion that's not yet mature; it's behind schedule. So what's the backup plan for that technology to ensure that you can still achieve mission success? And we also made a recommendation really to look at the breadth of the related Artemis programs and try to make decisions about some of the programmatic and technical tools that are going to be used to make management decisions across those programs. [Holly Hobbs:] And last question, what's the bottom line of this report? [Bill Russell:] The bottom line is NASA has made progress, but there are significant challenges to mature technologies and carry through on an ambitious schedule to achieve the 2024 moon landing date. [Holly Hobbs:] That was Bill Russell talking about GAO's recent review of NASA's efforts to send astronauts back to the Moon. Thank you for your time, Bill. [Bill Russell:] Thank you, Holly. [Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts subscribe to us on Apple podcasts. And make sure you leave a rating and review to let others know about the work we're doing. For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at GAO.gov.