Managing Risk, Cost, and Schedule in NASA's Artemis Program
Executive Summary
NASA's Artemis program is a multifaceted program that encompasses a series of missions, technologies, contractors and organizations. This paper explores the challenges of the project management aspects of risk management, cost and schedule management, and stakeholder coordination for the project of Artemis. The analysis reveals that there are interdependencies between the technical, contractor, schedule and cost risks. Human Landing System and spacesuit development illustrate how technical and contractor challenges can impact mission schedules and readiness. The paper also looks at how program requirements might change, and the impact on project costs and delivery time. Three salient conclusions emerge: risks need to be managed throughout the programme, cost and schedule are interrelated and coordination across organizations is a project risk. Increased schedule-risk analysis, cost transparency and cross-organizational risk management.
1. Introduction
The Artemis program is one of the most complex efforts of the U.S. government, NASA. Its goals are a continuous human presence on and around the Moon, and the development of capabilities for future human exploration. Artemis is not just one project, but a family of related missions, spacecraft, lunar landers, spacesuits, launch systems and more. NASA organizations, private contractors, commercial companies and international partners are also critical to the program.
This complexity makes the project Artemis an important case for project management. There are close linkages between technical uncertainty, safety requirements, contractor performance, cost, schedule, and changing requirements. Artemis II successfully completed its mission to fly four astronauts around the Moon in April 2026, and NASA later adjusted the designs of future Artemis missions and the status of various supporting projects (U.S. Government Accountability Office [GAO], 2026). The developments offer an opportunity to consider the process of NASA's risk management in a large program as the technical and strategic conditions continue to evolve.
The analysis of this paper addresses three areas of project-management that are related to each other: risk management, schedule and cost management, and stakeholder coordination. These areas are not independent of each other; technical and organizational issues in one component of the program can impact the schedule, cost, and performance of other components.
In this section, we explore how Artemis can be considered a complex project environment.
The Artemis is a multi-organization activity that has several roles. NASA take the lead in organizing the programme and integrating mission elements and private companies are tasked with vital systems including lunar landers and spacesuits. The Artemis environment is broader, and international cooperation has a part to play in that.
This structure can allow access to specific resources and share development tasks. But it also brings with it extra coordination needs. Public-private governance structures in which government and private are responsible for, sharing, and risking activities are becoming more prevalent in modern space programs, as described by Zancan et al. (2024). Artemis is an example of this new, more distributed model of space-program development.
Programmatic surroundings can also alter once projects are in progress. NASA updated the Artemis III, IV and V mission plans and status of several associated projects in 2026. GAO (2026) cited these changes as part of the acquisition and management issues that NASA was facing. This shows that project management is more than just following a unique plan in Artemis. Managers should also decide if existing projects are still in line with the new program goals.
3. Project Risk Management
Technical and Safety Risk
Risk management is of critical importance, since the technologies employed in Artemis have to function in a very demanding environment and safeguard human life. Technical risk thus does not only have an impact on the project's delays or additional costs.
The Human Landing System is an example of this challenge. NASA is collaborating with SpaceX and Blue Origin on lunar landers, which are quite technically and integrationally challenging. NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) stated that NASA had generally kept a tight rein on the growth of contract costs, but technical and integration difficulties remained a problem in managing schedules. The OIG also noted that there are still crew-safety concerns regarding the capability to respond to a contingency in the event that astronauts become stranded in space or on the moon (NASA OIG, 2026a).
This shows that cost control does not necessarily equal risk control. Technical risks can still jeopardize schedule or readiness for mission while a project can keep to budget.
In Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), NASA identifies potential failure scenarios and identifies which risks have the greatest impact on the overall mission risk, as described by Lane et al. (2026). Therefore, PRA offers a structured approach to inform decisions related to testing, design, and risk reduction. This is important for Artemis as continuous assessment is the way new information is revealed as systems are built and tested.
Contractor and Integration Risk is considered a high-risk area.
The next generation spacesuit program is another example. NASA originally planned to contract with both Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to develop spacesuits, but Collins was unable to demonstrate on time and NASA terminated its task orders, leaving Axiom as the sole remaining provider (NASA OIG, 2026b).
This put the contractors at risk of dependency. If there are more than one provider, an issue with one contractor could be absorbed by another. If one provider is left, technical or schedule issues can impact the entire program.
The spacesuit case illustrates the importance of including contractor management in the project-risk-management process. NASA needs to evaluate both if the contractors are on track to meet milestones and if there is enough margin in the program to accommodate contractor issues.
Schedule and Cost Management
Schedule Realism
Artemis shows there's more to schedule management than setting target launch dates. The testing, integration, technical uncertainty and project interdependencies are all to be considered in complex programs.
An example is GAO's review of NASA's Exploration Ground Systems program. GAO said that Mobile Launcher 2 needs to be more robust in schedule-risk analysis, as risks to individual activities may cascade into impacts to the overall Artemis schedule. This illustrates why it is important for project managers to look at the overall schedule and not just whether the individual contractors are hitting their milestones.
The following modifications to the Mobile Launcher 2 say it all. NASA subsequently cancelled or redirected a number of projects related to the Artemis program after the program architecture was modified. The total value of the contracts on the efforts affected by the delay had grown from $2.8 billion to $5.9 billion, and delivery dates had been pushed back by up to seven years, according to NASA OIG (2026c). These developments illustrate how projects may be impacted by the shifting program requirements based on different assumptions.
Cost-Schedule Interdependence
Cost and schedule should thus be managed simultaneously. A technical issue can cause further testing, which can create setbacks in development and add to costs. On the other hand, a late project may need extra resources to get the project rolling.
NASA has a formal program to manage these relationships, including cost and schedule control. However, GAO (2026) found that NASA had not fully implemented some previous recommendations concerning cost transparency and program cost and schedule controls.
Thus, the lack of project-management procedures is not the problem. The tougher issue is how to keep the cost and schedule information consistent as technical conditions and program requirements evolve. Artemis is an example of the need to constantly question the validity of original cost and schedule assumptions.
6. Planning and Development
Co-ordination is an important project-management issue in a distributed structure like Artemis. NASA needs to meld activities of the government entities with activities of the commercial entities which have different contracts, technologies, schedules and organizational structures.
Public-private space programmes have the potential to share costs, resources, skills and risks, but they also need to be well-governed and have defined responsibilities, as Zancan et al. (2024) state. The Artemis Human Landing System is a good example of this challenge, as NASA will need to integrate the work of SpaceX and Blue Origin with Orion, SLS, ground systems, mission requirements, and crew-safety requirements.
The spacesuit program is also a good example of how the failure of one contractor can result in reliance on another. These cases indicate that NASA needs to oversee the interfaces between projects, rather than just oversee individual contracts.
Thus coordination itself is a type of risk management. One organization's technical or schedule problem can impact another project's work. It is important, therefore, that responsibilities, modes of communication, reporting requirements, and risk-escalation procedures are clearly established to achieve program-level control.
7. Key Findings
First, there are interdependencies between the risks facing Artemis. Schedule problems can result from technical uncertainty, and vice versa, schedule problems can lead to higher costs and impact other dependent projects. Examples of technical and contractor risks impacting mission readiness are human landing systems and spacesuits.
Secondly, the control of cost and schedule should be done together. While NASA has formal cost and schedule controls, GAO's findings suggest that ongoing focus on integrated risk, cost, and schedule analysis is needed. If the overall mission relies on sequential and interconnected work, monitoring of individual contracts/activities is not enough.
Thirdly, coordination is a project risk in itself. The multiple government and commercial organizations involved in Artemis creates opportunities for sharing capabilities and responsibilities, but also contributes to the need for integration, accountability and communication.
8. Recommendations
First, NASA needs to keep building on integrated schedule-risk analysis for major Artemis missions. Technical uncertainty, testing, integration activities, contractor performance and inter-project dependencies should be included in a schedule assessment, not just individual milestones.
Second, NASA should improve the transparency of programs' costs when significant changes are made to the Artemis architecture. Managers should be able to know how much it will cost to finish the project, sunk costs, any other uses, and the value of continuing the project when projects are delayed, repurposed or terminated.
Third, Cross-organizational integration should be treated as a formal responsibility, a risk-management responsibility, of NASA. Major contractors and NASA organizations should have well-defined interface responsibilities, reporting requirements, risk-escalation procedures, and contingency plans should they have a contractor or technical issue. This would minimize the risk for one project being a surprise to another aspect of the Artemis program.
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9. Conclusion
NASA's Artemis program illustrates the difficulties of handling a large, technically complex program with multiple organizations and evolving requirements. While the Artemis II mission's success is a significant milestone, ongoing GAO and OIG work reveals other challenges with technical development, contractor reliance, schedule risk, cost transparency, and programmatic changes. These challenges are interlinked and thus need to be approached in an integrated manner in project management.Contractor relationships and strategic changes impact both technical risk and schedule, which in turn impacts cost. While NASA already has extensive project-management processes, Artemis shows the need to apply project-management processes as a system. To effectively manage the program, it is therefore important to have realistic schedules, cost information transparency, continuous risk assessment and good coordination.
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