Aging infrastructure, short-term thinking and ambitions that far outstrip funding are just some of the problems threatening the future of America's vaunted civilian space agency, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
In a report Mandated by Congress and released this week, experts said several of the agency's technology resources are suffering, including the Deep Space Network — an international collection of giant radio antennas overseen by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.
The report's authors warned that NASA has for too long prioritized short-term missions at the expense of long-term investments in its infrastructure, workforce and technology.
“The inevitable consequence of such a strategy is to erode the core capabilities that led to the organization’s greatness in the first place and that underpin its future potential,” the report said.
The choice facing the agency is a stark one, lead author Norman Augustine said Tuesday: either the United States should increase funding for NASA, or the agency should cut back on some missions.
“For NASA, this is not a time for business as usual,” said Augustine, a former Lockheed Martin executive. “The concerns it faces are ones that have built up over decades.”
While society at large has become exponentially more dependent on technology in the 60 years since NASA was founded, federal investment in research and development has declined significantly over the decades, the study notes.
This has been acutely felt at NASA, whose congressional funding, adjusted for inflation, has plummeted from its Apollo-era peak and remained essentially flat for decades.
For years, NASA's budget has hovered around 0.1 percent of the United States' total gross domestic product, less than one-eighth of what it was allocated in the mid-1960s.
Within the space agency, the report notes, funding for science and technology has remained at a steady percentage of the budget even as missions have become much more expensive and complicated.
As a result, NASA centers have only “low- to moderate-level efforts” underway to study emerging technologies that in an earlier era might have been pioneered at the agency.
“NASA is a strong organization today, but it has underfunded the NASA of the future,” Augustine said.
The centers include JPL, where the report committee interviewed staff at all levels of the organization.
JPL referred requests for comment to NASA.
“This report aligns with our ongoing efforts to ensure we have the infrastructure, workforce and technology NASA needs for the decades ahead,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement provided by the agency. “We will continue to work diligently to address the committee’s recommendations and advance our cutting-edge work on Earth, in the skies and in the stars.”
Another key problem the report identified is the neglect of NASA facilities, 83% of which have exceeded their intended useful life. Attempts to repair and upgrade the agency’s infrastructure are hampered by a rule requiring a lengthy and laborious review process for all requests over $1 million — a figure that has not changed since the rule was introduced despite a 30% increase in costs due to inflation.
JPL employees in particular expressed concern about this restriction, the report noted.
As a key example of a facility whose funding has failed to meet its growing demands, the report highlighted the Deep Space Network, which is the world's largest scientific telecommunications system.
JPL manages the network's three ground sites at Goldstone, California; Canberra, Australia; and Madrid. The network's budget has declined from $250 million in 2010 to about $200 million today, even as demands on it have increased.
As a result, the overburdened network has been forced to make costly compromises. During the Artemis I mission in late 2022, the lunar mission eliminated all other scientific uses of the network, costing more than $21 million in data transmission from the James Webb Space Telescope alone.
The situation on the ground is not much better, the report notes. Basic infrastructure such as roads and pipelines are failing where the facilities are located, and manpower is dangerously spread thin. The necessary maintenance and contracting would cost about $45 million a year for the next 10 years, the authors wrote.
“This report is a wake-up call for NASA and political leaders,” he said. Casey Dreierhead of space policy at the Planetary Society. “It identifies critical systemic problems that are already threatening NASA’s ability to pursue its ambitious exploration and science program—problems that have been felt but not quantified until now. We have a 20th-century infrastructure for a 21st-century space program.”
