Since the 1960s, geostationary satellites have been used by the United States to provide meteorological data for weather observation, research, and forecasting. NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service is responsible for managing the civilian operational geostationary satellite system, called GOES. Geostationary satellites can maintain a constant view of the earth from a high orbit of about 22,300 miles in space. NOAA operates GOES as a two-satellite system that is primarily focused on the United States (see fig. 1). These satellites provide timely environmental data about the earth’s atmosphere, surface, cloud cover, and the space environment to meteorologists and their audiences. They also observe the development of hazardous weather, such as hurricanes and severe thunderstorms, and track their movement and intensity to reduce or avoid major losses of property and life. The ability of the satellites to provide broad, continuously updated coverage of atmospheric conditions over land and oceans is important to NOAA’s weather forecasting operations. To provide continuous satellite coverage, NOAA acquires several satellites at a time as part of a series and launches new satellites every few years (see table 1).satellites and one backup satellite in orbit at all times. While the GOES-R program has made progress in completing its early design and is nearing the end of the design phase for its flight and ground system components, it completed key design milestones later than planned. Recent technical problems with the instruments and spacecraft, as well as a significant modification to the ground project’s development plan, have delayed the completion of key reviews and led to increased complexity for GOES-R’s development. Moreover, several instrument, spacecraft, and ground system problems identified during design, have not yet been resolved. In addition to the delays, the technical and programmatic challenges experienced by GOES-R’s flight and ground projects have led to increased costs for its development contracts. Despite these problems, program officials report that planned launch dates and cost estimates for the first two satellites have not changed, and that approximately $1.2 billion is currently in reserve to manage future delays and cost growth. However, the program has used approximately 30 percent of its reserves over the last 3 years and significant portions of development remain for major components—including the spacecraft and Core Ground System. In addition, the program did not change its reserves when it restored two satellites adding approximately $3.2 billion to the program’s baseline. As a result, the program will be challenged in completing its remaining development, particularly the final design and testing of the spacecraft and ground system, within its cost and schedule targets. Two key types of development milestones, which are identified in the GOES-R December 2007 management control plan, are the preliminary design review (PDR) and a more detailed critical design review (CDR). The PDR is an initial design milestone that assesses the readiness of the program to proceed with detailed design activities and the CDR is intended to demonstrate that the design is complete and appropriate to support proceeding to full-scale software development, as well as fabrication, assembly, integration, and testing. The program planned to complete the flight project’s PDR in April 2010 and CDR in April 2011. It planned to complete the ground project’s PDR in July 2010 and CDR in July 2011. These project-level reviews are to be completed before the program’s comprehensive PDR and CDR can be completed. The program has demonstrated progress toward completing its design. Specifically, the program and its subsequent projects have successfully completed their PDRs, demonstrating that they are ready to proceed with detailed design activities. The program and its projects are also currently progressing towards the final design for the entire GOES-R system, which is expected to be completed at the program’s CDR planned for August 2012. However, the program’s PDR milestones were completed later than their 2007 planned dates. Consequently, its CDR milestones were similarly delayed. Table 4 highlights delays in key program milestones as of April 2012. Going forward, assembly and testing of all flight instruments for the first satellite in the series is to be completed by August 2013. Both the flight and ground projects’ development components are expected to be complete by September 2015. Despite recent delays in program milestones, NOAA still expects to meet an October 2015 launch date for the first satellite in the series by utilizing planned schedule reserves. The Flight Project Office has made progress by completing the critical design reviews for each of its five main instruments, which is significant because the instrument designs will be applied to each satellite in the GOES-R series. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper was the most recent instrument to complete its critical design review, which occurred in August 2011—16 months after its planned completion date. Instrument fabrication, assembly, and testing activities are under way. The final instrument scheduled for completion—the Geostationary Lightning Mapper—is expected to be delivered for integration with the spacecraft by August 2013. Although instrument design milestones are complete and assembly and testing activities are under way, each of the instruments and the spacecraft has recently encountered technical challenges. The Flight Project Office has taken steps to resolve several technical problems through additional engineering support and redesign efforts. However, there are still important technical challenges to be addressed, including signal blurring problems for several of the Advanced Baseline Imager’s infrared channels and Geostationary Lightning Mapper emissions that are exceeding specifications. The project office is monitoring these problems and has plans in place to address them. The current development efforts and recent challenges for components of the flight project are described in table 5. The Ground Project Office has made progress in completing the ground system’s preliminary design. However, in doing so it experienced problems in defining ground system software requirements and identified problems with its dependencies on flight project schedules. Specifically, the project office discovered in early 2011 that software design requirements had not progressed enough to conduct the ground system’s preliminary design review. In addition, the ground system’s development schedule included software deliveries from flight project instruments that were not properly integrated—they had not yet been defined or could not be met. To address these problems, the Ground Project Office made significant revisions to the Core Ground System’s baseline development plan and schedule. In order to avoid potential slippages to GOES-R’s launch date, project officials decided to switch from plans to deliver software capabilities at major software releases to an approach where software capabilities could be delivered incrementally (prior to major releases) as the project received data inputs from the flight project. According to NOAA and program officials, the revised development approach is to provide flexibility in the ground system’s development schedule and reduce risk associated with the original waterfall schedule. However, the revised plan is expected to cost $85 million more than the original plan through the Core Ground System’s completion. This cost includes increased contractor and government staff, new oversight tools, and more verification and testing activities associated with an increased number of software deliveries. Program officials acknowledged that the revised plan intends to expend additional resources to reduce schedule risk and potential impacts to GOES-R’s launch date, but that it also introduces new cost and schedule risks associated with incremental development, such as more software development and verification activities that require additional government oversight and continuous monitoring. In addition, the program has cancelled previously exercised options to the ground project that were once considered part of its original baseline. In early 2011, the program determined that it could no longer fund Core Ground System contract options—which were estimated to cost approximately $50 million. Program officials stated that they cancelled the contract options due to approaching development commitments, including revisions to the ground system’s revised plan and schedule, and funding reductions from fiscal year 2011. According to program officials, the work to be performed under the cancelled contract options could be addressed by NOAA after GOES-R satellites are launched; however, there are currently no plans in place to do so. Table 6 describes the development efforts and recent challenges for ground project components. The GOES-R program’s estimated costs include, among other things, actual and estimated contract costs associated with design, development, integration, and testing activities for the instruments, spacecraft, and ground system as well as procurement of the satellites’ launch vehicles. The estimated costs also include government costs such as NOAA and NASA program management support and contingency reserves to be applied towards critical risks and issues as they arise. As of January 2010, the program reported estimates of $3.3 billion for the flight project (including reserves of $598 million), $1.7 billion for the ground project (including reserves of $431 million), $2.0 billion for other program costs (including reserves of $617 million), and $748 million for operations and maintenance. Although NOAA has not changed its program cost estimates for the development of GOES-R and GOES-S, contract costs for the instruments, spacecraft, and ground system are rising. Specifically, contractor estimated costs for flight and ground project components grew by $757 million, or 32 percent, between January 2010 and January 2012. Table 7 identifies growth in estimated contract costs for major program components. Not only have development contracts experienced rising costs since January 2010, but they have also experienced larger cost increases more recently. For example, between January 2011 and January 2012, contractors’ estimated costs increased by $184 million for the Core Ground System, compared with $88 million for the period between January 2010 and January 2011. Also, between January 2011 and January 2012, contractors’ estimated costs for the spacecraft and the Advanced Baseline Imager increased by $119 million and $91 million compared with $32 million and $57 million, respectively, between January 2010 and January 2011. Figure 4 depicts recent growth in estimated costs for these development components.