These projects also surpassed their collective schedules by nearly 10 years.
"Continuing a recent trend, NASA's portfolio of major projects experienced significant cost and schedule overruns," according to the GAO's 14th annual assessment of NASA's major projects, "and more projects were added."
NASA projects are experiencing their largest collective cost overruns and schedule delays from their original baselines since the GAO began reporting in 2009, though just six projects account for the majority of these overruns. These projects include the James Webb Space Telescope and components of NASA's mega moon rocket — including the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.
COVID-19 was not the primary driver of these overruns, but the pandemic exacerbated NASA's challenges.
It is worth noting that two projects, the Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite and the Lucy spacecraft that will study asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the sun, completed development this past year under cost and ahead of schedule.
In its response to the report, NASA said the agency has worked with the GAO to "find and implement improvements in our programs." But it also noted that the report is cumulative and that cost overruns are largely tied to three of NASA's largest programs — the James Webb Space Telescope (which launched last year), Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.
As such, the cumulative report "cannot effectively improve" until those programs are no longer included.
"The cumulative approach also obscures the excellent progress NASA has achieved in controlling costs and schedule for most of the portfolio, particularly for small- and mid-size major projects," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote in his response to the GAO report.
The GAO acknowledged that NASA is taking steps to improve its portfolio management, but said it's "too soon to determine" the results.
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