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ExpectMore.govExpectMore.gov home pageEXPECT FEDERAL PROGRAMS TO PERFORM WELL, AND BETTER EVERY YEAR.
 
Program Assessment

Program

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NASA Astronomy and Astrophysics Research

NASA's Astronomy and Astrophysics Research program works to discover the origin, structure, evolution, and destiny of the universe and to search for planets beyond the solar system through an array of space flight missions, ground-based assets, and research and data analysis activity.

Rating

What This Rating Means

PERFORMING
Adequate

This rating describes a program that needs to set more ambitious goals, achieve better results, improve accountability or strengthen its management practices.
  • The program has a well-defined, clear objective and continues to return outstanding, groundbreaking scientific results in support of the astronomy and astrophysics community's scientific research priorities. The program's Hubble Space Telescope, for example, continues to revolutionize scientific understanding of the universe after more than 15 years in operation.
  • The astronomy and astrophysics community's scientific priorities for the program outstrip the resources available over the next several years. The community will need to establish clear priorities for all aspects of the program in the next few years through the National Research Council's decadal survey process.
  • The program has a poor recent record of controlling costs for its flight missions. If adequate steps are not taken to address this problem, resources for new flight missions will be extremely constrained. The program also lacks procedures for measuring and achieving efficiencies.

Improvement Plan

About Improvement Plans

We are taking the following actions to improve the performance of the program:

  • Improving flight project cost and schedule performance, by changing mission plans, scope, partners, and management where appropriate.
  • Establishing means to maximize return on available resources for flight and research projects as well as metrics to measure efficiencies gained.
  • Making grantee annual performance data available on the NASA web site.

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