[ad_1]
NASA’s Office of Inspector General has released its 2020 report detailing the challenges the space agency faces and how they could shape the coming years. A total of seven challenges are listed, the first revolving around NASA’s ambitious goal of returning humans to the moon in 2024. According to the report, it may not be able to meet that deadline.
NASA’s Office of Inspector General is mandated by the Reports Consolidation Act of 2020 to conduct an independent assessment for the major challenges facing the space agency, including those related to performance and management. This year’s evaluation identified seven challenges:
1: land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024
2: Improve the management of major projects
3: Supporting a human presence in low earth orbit
4: Attract and retain a highly skilled workforce
5: Improve supervision of contracts, grants and cooperation agreements
6: IT security risk management and mitigation
7: Addressing obsolete infrastructure and structures
Focusing on the first and biggest challenge, the assessment concluded that NASA will have “difficulty landing astronauts on the moon by the end of 2024″. In fact, the report says NASA will need “ stable and timely ” funding as well as “ strong, consistent and sustained leadership ” from NASA at POTUS if it hopes to achieve this anywhere near its own. ” “ ambitious ” Goal 2024.
Summarizing the reasons for its assessment, NASA’s OIG report explains:
For its part, NASA must determine the true long-term costs of its human exploration programs, establish realistic programs, define system requirements and mission planning, form or consolidate international partnerships, and leverage commercial space capabilities. Over the past decade, our oversight work has found that NASA has consistently struggled to address each of these significant issues, and the accelerated schedule of the Artemis mission is likely to exacerbate these challenges further.
The full report can be downloaded from the NASA OIG website here [PDF].
Source link
