JWST is a large, deployable, infrared-optimized space telescope intended to be the scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST is designed for a 5-year mission to find the first stars and trace the evolution of galaxies from their beginnings to their current formation. It is intended to operate in an orbit approximately 1.5 million kilometers—or 1 million miles—from the Earth. With its 6.5-meter primary mirror, JWST will be able to operate at 100 times the sensitivity of the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST’s science instruments require extremely cold temperatures, so a tennis-court-sized sunshield will be used to protect the mirrors and instruments from the sun’s heat and allow them to observe very faint infrared sources. The Hubble Space Telescope operates primarily in the visible and ultraviolet regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The observatory segment of JWST includes several elements (Optical Telescope Element (OTE), Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM), and spacecraft) and major subsystems (sunshield, cryocooler). These elements and major subsystems are being developed through a mixture of NASA, contractor, and international partner efforts. See interactive graphic, figure 1. For more information on the JWST’s organizational structure, see appendix III. Given JWST’s complexity, it requires a multiyear integration and testing schedule that includes five separate periods over the course of almost 7 years to build the observatory in preparation for launch. See figure 2 for the planned integration and test flow for JWST. For the majority of the work remaining, the JWST project will rely on three contractors: Northrop Grumman, Exelis, and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Northrop Grumman plays the largest role, developing the sunshield, the OTE, the spacecraft, and a cooling subsystem for the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). Northrop Grumman performs most of this work under a prime contract with NASA, but its work on the MIRI cooler is performed under a separate subcontract with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Exelis is manufacturing the test equipment, equipping the test chamber, and assisting in the testing of the optics of JWST. Finally, STScI will collect and evaluate research proposals from the scientific community and will receive and store the scientific data collected by those observations, both of which are services that they currently provide for the Hubble Space Telescope. Additionally, for JWST, STScI will develop and operate the ground system that manages and controls the telescope’s observations on behalf of NASA. MIRI—one of JWST’s four instruments in the ISIM—requires a dedicated, interdependent two-stage cooler subsystem designed to bring the infrared light detector within MIRI to the required temperature of 6.7 Kelvin (K), just above absolute zero. This major subsystem is referred to as a cryocooler. The cryocooler moves helium gas through 10 meters (approximately 33 feet) of refrigerant lines from the spacecraft located on the sun-facing surface of the JWST observatory to the colder, shaded side where the ISIM is located. According to NASA officials, a cooler of this configuration has never been developed or flown in space before. See figure 3 for a depiction of the cryocooler on JWST. Project officials stated that the MIRI cryocooler is particularly complex and challenging because of the relatively great distance between the cooling components and the need to overcome multiple sources of unwanted heat through the regions of JWST before the subsystem can cool MIRI’s detector. Specifically, the cooling components span temperatures ranging from approximately 300K (about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, or room temperature) where the spacecraft is located on the sun-facing surface to approximately 40K (about -388 degrees Fahrenheit) within the ISIM. Complex development efforts like JWST must plan to address a myriad of risks and unforeseen technical challenges. To do this, projects reserve extra time in their schedules—which is referred to as schedule reserve— and extra money in their budgets–which is referred to as cost reserve. Schedule reserve is extra time in the project’s overall schedule that is allocated to specific activities, elements, and major subsystems in the event there are delays or to address unforeseen risks. Each JWST element and major subsystem has been allocated schedule reserve. When an element or major subsystem exhausts schedule reserve it may begin to affect schedule reserves on other elements or major subsystems whose progress is dependent on prior work being finished for its activities to proceed. The element or major subsystem with the least amount of schedule reserve determines the critical path for the project. Any delay to an activity that is on the critical path will reduce schedule reserve for the whole project, and could ultimately impact the overall project schedule. Cost reserves are additional funds that can be used to address unanticipated issues for any element or major subsystem. Cost reserves are used to mitigate issues during the development of a project. For example, cost reserves can be used to buy additional materials to replace a component or, if a project needs to preserve schedule reserve, reserves can be used to accelerate work by adding extra shifts to expedite manufacturing and save time. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (Goddard)—the NASA center with responsibility for managing JWST— has issued requirements that at project confirmation establish both the level of cost and funded schedule reserves that projects must hold. After this point, a specified amount of schedule reserve continues to be required throughout the remainder of development. Prior to 2011, early technical and management challenges, contractor performance issues, low level cost reserves, and poorly phased funding levels caused JWST to delay work, which contributed to significant cost and schedule overruns. After years of requirements changes, cost growth, low reserve funding, deferred work, and launch delays, the Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies requested an independent review of JWST. NASA commissioned the Independent Comprehensive Review Panel, which issued its report in October 2010, and concluded that JWST was executing well from a technical standpoint, but that the baseline funding did not reflect the most probable cost with adequate reserves in each year of project execution, resulting in an unexecutable project. Following this review, the JWST program underwent a replan in September 2011 and Congress in November 2011 placed an $8 billion cap on the formulation and development costs for the project. On the basis of the replan, NASA rebaselined JWST with a life-cycle cost estimate of $8.835 billion that included additional money for operations and a planned launch in October 2018. The revised life-cycle cost estimate included a total of 13 months of funded schedule reserve. In the President’s fiscal year 2013 budget request, NASA reported a 66 percent joint cost and schedule confidence level for these cost and schedule baselines. A joint cost and schedule confidence level, or JCL, is the process NASA uses to assign a percentage to the probable success of meeting cost and schedule estimates and is part of the project’s estimating process. In January 2014, GAO found that the JWST project was generally executing to its 2011 revised cost and schedule baselines, but that the most recent work was taking longer than planned. We noted that roughly half of the project’s cost reserves for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 had been committed before those years had even begun, which would constrain JWST’s cost reserve spending in the near term. We reported that while the cryocooler subcontractor was making technical progress, cryocooler development remained an ongoing challenge as there were still unresolved technical issues related to its performance, and its schedule was both optimistic and unreliable. We also found that three of the element and major subsystem schedules the project was using to manage were unreliable and did not meet best practices, which called into question the reliability of the integrated master schedule that is built from those schedules. In 2012, we reported that the accuracy of the project’s cost estimate was lessened because the summary schedule used for the joint cost and schedule confidence level was not detailed enough to determine how risks were applied to critical project activities. We recommended that NASA conduct an updated joint cost and schedule risk analysis to address the issues we identified and use more detailed cost information to adjust its cost estimates. While NASA concurred with our recommendation, officials subsequently stated that they did not plan to conduct an updated joint cost and schedule confidence level analysis, and that the project’s monthly analyses were sufficient for the project’s needs. Thus, we expressed concern in our January 2014 report that NASA’s continued lack of up-to-date cost estimates that incorporate new risks which had emerged since 2011 would inhibit NASA’s ability to effectively monitor its contractors’ progress. We proposed that Congress consider requiring NASA to conduct an updated joint cost and schedule confidence level analysis to address this concern. The JWST project has 11 months of schedule reserve remaining—more than required by Goddard standards. In the case of JWST, however, the most significant risks lie ahead in the remaining 4 years, as the project must complete five integration and test periods, three of which have not yet started. Essentially, the risk is defined by bringing all of the complex JWST elements and major subsystems together, testing them, and resolving problems when there is limited schedule left for resolution. All of JWST’s five elements and major subsystems have just weeks of reserve left before their schedules become pacing items on the project’s critical path, potentially reducing the reserve further. More milestones established annually for the various elements and major subsystems have been delayed or deferred during fiscal year 2014 than in the previous 3 years following the replan.