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WASHINGTON – A NASA audit concluded that the costs imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic on the agency could reach $ 3 billion, with several large science and exploration programs accounting for a large portion of those costs.
A March 31 report from NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) said the agency expects the effects of the pandemic on the agency, ranging from closed facilities to disrupted supply chains. , reach nearly $ 3 billion. Of that amount, about $ 1.6 billion came from 30 major programs and projects, defined by NASA as those with a total cost of at least $ 250 million.
“Although NASA officials included a schedule margin in program and project plans to deal with unforeseen circumstances, in many cases the margins were not sufficient to absorb the impact of the pandemic.” , says the OIG report. He added that full cost accounting for the pandemic will not be possible “until the COVID-19 emergency has subsided.”
The project with the largest cost increase in the report is the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, formerly known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). He said costs of $ 3 million due to the pandemic in FY2020, but estimates nearly $ 400 million in additional impacts in the years to come. The mission has a life cycle cost of $ 3.9 billion.
“Subcontractors working on the Roman Space Telescope were significantly affected, resulting in a decrease in the number of bids on the proposed work, longer delivery times and delays of parts to complete assemblies,” says The report. “This, in turn, impacted contractors and affected the assembly and further testing schedule.”
NASA officials previously said Roman was particularly hard hit because the pandemic peaked in her planned spending, just as she passed her Key Decision Point C review in early March 2020. That review approved plans to move to large-scale space development. telescope.
“COVID has had a measurable impact on the Roman Space Telescope,” Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said at a March 25 meeting of the Board of Studies’ Astronomy and Astrophysics Committee of the National Academies. “COVID has struck at exactly the worst possible time for a mission.”
Hertz did not quantify the cost and timing effects of the pandemic on Roman, although he previously said the launch would likely lose six months, a delay also noted in the OIG report. Once these impacts are independently verified, “we’ll go through a process of resetting the Roman calendar and the cost associated with that resetting.”
The OIG report said that, given the known effects of the pandemic, “officials already anticipate needing additional funding to [fiscal year] 2022 ”for Roman.
The space launch system recorded the second highest cost increase in terms of overall dollars, at $ 363 million, including $ 8 million for fiscal year 2020 and $ 355 million for fiscal years 2021 to 2023. One three months delay in the first SLS mission, Artemis 1, as well as the “production reformulation” each accounted for around a third of the costs. The remainder came from “peak costs” to compress schedules as well as costs of facility closures.
The Orion spacecraft incurred costs of $ 146 million, of which $ 5 million in fiscal year 2020 and $ 66 million in fiscal year 2021. Because the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 1 mission was almost over by the time the pandemic hit, the biggest effects were on the Orion. spaceship for Artemis missions 2 and 3, both still in production. These problems have spread to Europe, with delays in the production of the European service module for the Artemis 2 Orion.
The James Webb Space Telescope will see its cost increase by $ 100 million due to its launch delay from March to October of this year. This increase, however, will be contained within the $ 8.8 billion cost cap for the mission using existing budgetary reserves.
Two other developing science missions, Europa Clipper and the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud and Ocean Ecosystem (PACE), reported cost increases of $ 97 million and $ 89.2 million, respectively . PACE, whose cost increases represent around 10% of its total estimated cost, will also see its launch slide by nine months.
However, many other major projects and programs have experienced much smaller cost increases. The commercial crew program has seen cost increases of $ 2.2 million in 2020 and $ 2.3 million forecast for years to come. The 2020 increase came from the use of NASA aircraft for mission-critical travel during the pandemic and “socially remote accommodation” for astronauts and other personnel ahead of Demo-2 launches. and Crew-1 in May and November 2020, respectively.
How NASA will cover these costs is not certain. The agency received just $ 60 million under the CARES (Aid, Relief and Economic Security) law against coronaviruses in March 2020, which it is using for pandemic-related costs, ranging from infrastructure IT improved to personal protective equipment. Hertz, in recent presentations, noted that overruns in one part of NASA’s astrophysics portfolio, such as the flagship JWST and Roman missions, would not flow into other parts of the portfolio, such as small missions or research funding.
The cost estimates included in the report, the OIG added, are unlikely to be final figures. “Due to the lingering uncertainties around the COVID-19 pandemic, NASA will likely continue to experience impacts on its major programs and projects.”
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