Hello.
I’m Ray Tolomeo here to discuss the Office
of Inspector General’s review of NASA’s
next robotic rover mission to Mars known as
the Mars 2020 Project.
Since 1964, NASA has spent more than $21 billion
on missions to explore Mars, including four
robotic rovers that landed on the planet’s
surface, five static landers, and numerous
orbiting satellites.
Each mission has contributed to the scientific
understanding of the planet and built on discoveries
made by prior missions.
For example, NASA’s most recent rover mission
to the planet – the Mars Science Laboratory,
which landed in August 2012 – confirmed
that key ingredients needed to support living
microbes, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen,
phosphorus, and sulfur, were present on ancient
Mars.
Mars 2020 – will be equipped with seven
science instruments to further scientific
understanding and demonstrate new technologies,
including an experiment to produce oxygen
from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere,
which if successful could help support the
Agency’s goal of sending humans to the planet
in the late 2030s.
The $2.4 billion Project will use both new
technology, as well as heritage technology
from the Mars Science Laboratory.
In this audit, we assessed how emerging challenges
could affect the Mars 2020 mission and whether
the project plan is based on complete and
accurate cost, schedule, and risk information.
The primary constraint and driver for Mars
2020 development is the planned July 2020
launch date.
An optimal launch window from Earth to Mars
of approximately 20 days occurs every 26 months,
so missing the launch window could impose
significant additional costs related to overhead,
stand-by work force, replacement of degraded
parts and components, and storage while waiting
for the next launch opportunity.
We identified several schedule-related issues
that may indicate the Project is overly optimistic
about its development schedule, including
a condensed development schedule for five
of the instruments and a shorter development
schedule and a less detailed Integrated Master
Schedule for assigning timelines to all required
tasks than NASA used for Mars Science Laboratory.
Moreover, finalization of engineering drawings
– the mechanism by which engineers communicate
to manufacturers the details of a product’s
design – appears to be lagging.
Failure to address these issues could affect
the Project’s ability to ensure design stability,
achieve technical objectives, and meet cost
and schedule expectations.
We made four recommendations to assist the
Mars 2020 Project achieve its technical objectives,
meet milestones, and control costs.
To read the full report, please visit our
website at oig.nasa.gov.
