Summary: A new report warns that NASA's long-term success is at risk due to outdated infrastructure, budget mismatches, and a focus on short-term goals. It recommends that NASA prioritize investments in its facilities and workforce, even delaying new missions if necessary. The report emphasizes the need for better funding and management to ensure NASA can continue to innovate and meet national objectives.
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Continued Success at NASA at Risk Due to Budget and Program Mismatch, Short-Term Focus, and Aging Infrastructure, Says New ReportNews Release | September 10, 2024
WASHINGTON ― NASA catalyzes technology development across disciplines and industries, serves as a driver for U.S. innovation, enhances the nation’s technological reputation, and inspires students to pursue STEM careers, but the agency’s sustainability and long-term capacity to satisfy national objectives are at risk, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The report was requested by Congress in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.
The report identifies out-of-date infrastructure, pressures to prioritize short-term objectives, budget mismatches, inefficient management practices, and nonstrategic reliance on commercial partners as the core issues. NASA should rebalance its priorities and increase investments in its facilities, expert workforce, and development of cutting-edge technology, even if it means forestalling initiation of new missions, the report says.
“NASA has overcome incredible, unique challenges over its 66-year history, becoming a fount of innovation and a source of national pride, but its biggest problem now is more mundane and all too common ― the tendency to focus on near-term accomplishments at the expense of long-term viability,” said Norman Augustine, former undersecretary of the Army, retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, and chair of the committee that wrote the new report. “This isn’t happening in a vacuum ― NASA has been operating with a mismatch of work and funding ― and now our space agency, Congress, and the nation need to make some difficult decisions about priorities in order to rebuild the foundations for NASA’s continued success.”
NASA’s portfolio is based on accomplishing things that have never been done before, but the environment in which the agency functions is complicated by several factors, including:
• Rapid advancements in technology
• The need to compete for talent with the commercial space sector, other space agencies, and other high-tech sectors
• A declining federal discretionary budget and a flat agency budget (in terms of purchasing power)
• Lack of timely congressional authorization acts
• Shortfalls in the nation’s pre-K-12 education system
• Increasing competition in space from China Overcoming Systemic Issues
NASA has been able to sustain progressively more complex and difficult research, technology development, and space missions over the past several decades. However, it cannot continue to do so forever, the report warns, as NASA’s budget is inadequate for the scope, complexity, and difficulty of the mission work it is pursuing. Steps should be taken to ensure NASA receives sufficient funding and that budget allocations are properly balanced between near-term mission work and long-term institutional support.
Only two NASA congressional authorization acts have become law since 2017, which has complicated and stifled substantive long-range planning at NASA. This inhibits the forecasting of workforce, infrastructure, and technology needs. The report details how NASA faces both internal and external pressures to prioritize short-term measures, which results in a range of adverse impacts to areas such as contracting, budgeting, infrastructure, and research and development.
The agency’s recently initiated NASA 2040 review is a promising start and could provide an avenue for addressing many of the issues identified in this report. Infrastructure for the 21st Century
NASA’s technical infrastructure portfolio is critical for direct project work, technology and concept development, and for use by other entities. Its wind tunnels, for instance, enable world-class aerosciences and aerosystems work performed by NASA, the Defense Department, and U.S. industry, the report says.
Chronic insufficient funding of infrastructure across the agency has left it with dated fixed assets and enterprise systems that will increasingly hamper the achievement of vital agency missions, the report says. Eighty-three percent of its facilities are now past their design life, with many of the facilities dating back to the 1960s. This aging infrastructure is expensive to maintain, wastes valuable personnel time, and makes it more difficult to attract and retain world-class talent.
The report provides examples of infrastructural areas of concern, including:
• High-end computing infrastructure for mission support, due to the rapid pace of advancement and widespread demand in that field, leading to an overburdening of existing resources
• Space communication capacity, including the Deep Space Network, to meet the current and near-future mission needs of NASA and its international partners
NASA should work with Congress to establish a working capital fund to eliminate NASA’s maintenance backlog over the next decade and provide continuous support for infrastructure maintenance and enhancements, the report says. The fund could be financed by the government and users of NASA facilities. Many other U.S. agencies, such as the General Services Administration and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Justice, have working capital funds to serve similar purposes. Maintaining Internal Technological Capabilities and an Expert Workforce
NASA has successfully helped foster a thriving commercial space ecosystem in the U.S., which has been a national policy goal for decades. In turn, NASA has benefited from its relationships with industry. The report emphasizes that while NASA will need to continue utilizing commercial partners, excessive outsourcing of highly specialized, early-phase work raises serious concerns.
Excessive use of certain contract types removes NASA employees from hands-on mission work and can deprive them of the ability to develop and maintain leading-edge technical expertise and leadership skills. This negatively impacts in-house capabilities; degrades NASA’s ability to provide creative and experienced insights, oversight, and leadership of programs; and introduces major mission risk — particularly should a commercial provider fail to deliver or choose to exit the market.
Extreme caution is needed to ensure that NASA’s critical relationships with commercial partners do not erode NASA’s own expertise, particularly in early-phase developmental efforts, and the agency should work to maintain a balance between benefiting from its partners’ capabilities and maintaining advanced internal skills. The report recommends that NASA drastically increase its investment in internal research and development to advance early-stage, mission-critical technologies that are not commercially available currently. It also makes a range of recommendations for maintaining an expert workforce, including the adoption of a new human capital strategy, and coordination with Congress to refresh the NASA Flexibility Act of 2004 and gain more appointment and hiring authority.
The report also addresses the shifting balance of responsibilities and authorities, including those between mission directorates and NASA centers. It recommends that NASA assess its current mission management model and evaluate the integrity of checks and balances in technical oversight of programmatic work.
The study — undertaken by the Committee on NASA Mission Critical Workforce, Infrastructure, and Technology — was sponsored by NASA.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions relat (View Highlight)
