WASHINGTON—Questionable contracting procedures, unnecessary accounting problems, schedule delays, and more than $2 billion in cost overruns are raising serious doubts about NASA’s plan to return Americans to the Moon in late 2024, according to the agency’s inspector general (IG).
When NASA announced in 2019 the Artemis program to put U.S. astronauts on the Moon’s surface in late 2024, the plan was to use the Space Launch System (SLS), a two-stage heavy-lift rocket, to put the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle (Orion) into space.
