NASA sponsors the development of numerous science missions intended to advance our understanding of the universe, our own planet, and key scientific questions, all from the vantage point of space. These missions benefit society with scientific discoveries, foster technological innovation, support environmental monitoring and disaster response, and can have other educational, economic, and national security benefits. Every science mission that NASA funds also represents a significant investment of taxpayer dollars and years of engineering work. Once a mission’s primary objectives are complete, an Extended Mission (EM) can further leverage NASA’s investment and continue to collect valuable science data for many years. We have conducted a thorough investigation of NASA EMs and have developed a model to estimate their costs. This research involved extensive study and normalization of monthly mission cost, experimentation with various mission type groupings, and testing of equation forms. The monthly cost of NASA science missions was generally found to decrease over time likely due to mission operations becoming more efficient, mission focus changing, system capability aging, and personnel transitioning. For Cost Estimating Relationship (CER) development, a 12-month moving average of monthly cost was used to help partially eliminate noise in the data and normalize across missions. Missions were also placed in both finer and broader groups following mission type and categorizations found in the NASA Mission Operations Cost Estimation Tool (MOCET). While some finer groups achieved excellent fit, broader groups were found to perform better in the overall context of the model. Several equations forms were tested for CER generation including linear, non-linear, general logarithmic, and scaled logarithmic. The scaled logarithmic equation form was found to produce the best results based on evaluation of fit statistics and cross validation. The scaled logarithmic equation form employs the cumulative average of the prime mission phase cost as an input, which can be obtained from the existing MOCET tool. The EM cost model can be used to support NASA Senior Reviews of operating missions and overall portfolio planning within NASA.


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    Title :

    Extended Missions Operations Costing Capability for NASA Science Missions




    Publication date :

    2024-03-02


    Size :

    5047652 byte




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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