GAO: NASA’s Major Projects Mostly Stable, but Artemis Overhaul, Staffing Cuts Raise Risk

NASA’s largest projects largely held steady over the past year, according to a new Government Accountability Office review, but the agency’s broader portfolio is entering a riskier period as it tries to rework its Artemis moon program, recover from steep workforce losses and plan around a proposed budget cut of more than 20%.

The GAO report, “NASA: Assessments of Major Projects,” published Thursday, is the watchdog’s 18th annual review of the agency’s major programs. It says NASA’s portfolio includes 36 major projects — each with life-cycle costs above $250 million — with 18 now in development. Among those 18, only two reported schedule delays in the past year, totaling two months, and three reported cost overruns totaling $501.4 million. Even so, cumulative cost overruns across the portfolio rose from $4.4 billion to nearly $4.7 billion, while cumulative schedule delays increased from 13.1 years to 14 years.

The Orion crew capsule remains the biggest single reason costs are still climbing. GAO said Orion accounted for more than half of annual cost overruns in the portfolio and almost 75% of cumulative cost overruns. That makes Orion an outsized factor in NASA’s overall performance, even in a year when most projects avoided new trouble.

The report’s central warning is less about what slipped this year than about what could slip next. GAO said NASA’s exploration portfolio now faces added uncertainty after the agency announced major Artemis changes in February and March 2026. Artemis is NASA’s campaign to return astronauts to the moon and build a sustained human presence there.

Those changes revised the focus of Artemis III, IV and V, paused work on three Artemis projects, and shifted emphasis away from Gateway — the planned small station in lunar orbit — toward infrastructure meant to support longer-term operations on the lunar surface. NASA said publicly on Feb. 27 that it would standardize Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft configurations, add an additional test mission in 2027 and target a crewed lunar landing in early 2028.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at the time: “NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the President’s national space policy. With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.”

GAO said carrying out those Artemis changes creates acquisition management challenges — meaning the complicated work of buying, developing and integrating major systems under cost and schedule controls. The watchdog said two Artemis-related projects were already reporting technical and programmatic risks likely to delay schedules.

The agency is also trying to manage those changes with a smaller workforce. GAO said NASA reduced its civil-service workforce by about 4,000 people, or nearly 22%, in 2025 in response to an administration directive to shrink the federal workforce. Twenty-five of NASA’s 36 major projects have reported effects from the staffing reduction, according to the report.

NASA announced in February 2026 that it would resume hiring to address skill gaps, GAO said, but that plan is now clouded by budget uncertainty. The White House’s fiscal 2027 budget request proposes $18.8 billion for NASA, a $5.6 billion reduction from the enacted 2026 level, or about 23%. GAO described that as a proposed cut of more than 20% and said it adds uncertainty about whether NASA can hire the workers it needs. Congress, not the White House, will decide final appropriations.

That combination of a program overhaul, thinner staffing and unresolved funding matters beyond any single mission. NASA plans to invest at least $70 billion in estimated life-cycle costs across its 36 major projects, a scale that makes GAO’s warning about mounting structural risk hard to dismiss.