Space Station

Although the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to begin developing critical space station software soon, basic management controls that NASA and its contractors need to build and maintain high-quality software are not in place. As a result, safety and cost risks are increased. NASA has not implemented independent verification and validation of critical flight software and lacks a systematic approach to software risk management. In addition, NASA has been slow to implement standards, has cut funding for programwide support tools, and allows different software tool sets to be used in different locations. The agency has not, however, assessed the long-term cost impact of these actions. NASA still has time to assess these issues, but it is rapidly approaching a juncture of critical milestones, after which its ability to influence software development practices will be severely restricted--and mistakes will be much more expensive to fix.

GAO found that: (1) basic management control techniques for NASA and its contractors to build and maintain high quality software are not in place, which has increased safety and cost risks; (2) NASA has not implemented independent verification and validation of critical flight software and lacks a systematic risk management approach; (3) NASA has been slow to implement standards, and has reduced funding for support tools; and (4) NASA has not assessed all software development issues, and is approaching a juncture of critical milestones that will limit its influence on software development practices.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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