According to the news of NTD, in the audit report prepared by the NASA General Audit Office, it was determined that the SLS project, which was carried out within the scope of the mission that NASA named “Artemis”, had additional cost and delay problems.
The report stated that if the existing problems are not resolved, there may be additional costs and delays that could jeopardize the Artemis mission.
In the report, it was stated that NASA spent more than 23 billion dollars at the end of 2022 for SLS, the largest rocket it has ever made, and that the budget allocated for the program exceeded 6 billion dollars.
At the same time, it was determined in the report that NASA’s SLS program was 6 years behind the predicted targets.
It was noted that four RS-25 engines were used per takeoff for the SLS, which was launched for the first time in November 2022, and 16 of these engines were taken from old space shuttles.
The report revealed that old technology from existing space shuttles, such as the aforementioned engines, did not help the budget as NASA expected, and the way in which old components were integrated with new systems was more complex than anticipated.
The Artemis Moon mission project is known as the continuation of the “Constellation” program, which was launched in 2005 with the goal of going to the Moon and then to Mars by 2020, and was canceled by the then-US President Barack Obama administration due to over budget, falling behind its targets and insufficient innovation. .