Development Approach Is Risky

System (EOSDIS). Because the Committee intends to undertake extensive oversight of EOSDIS, you asked that we examine several key aspects of NASA'S system development approach, including the extent to which EOSDIS (1) will use prototyping to reduce system development costs and risks, and (2) may require technologies that are beyond the current state of the art. The report identifies weaknesses in NASA'S development strategy, which could prevent future global change researchers from gaining access to and making optimal use of valuable as well as costly data. As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution of it until 30 days from the date of this letter. We will then give copies to appropriate congressional committees; the Administrator, NASA; and other interested parties. Copies will also be made available to others upon request. Executive Summary Purpose NASA has initiated a program, called the Earth Observing System (EOS), to collect an integrated set of data to study the earth's atmosphere, biosphere, oceans, and land surfaces as a complete system over a %-year period. The data from EOS will be processed, archived, and distributed by the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS). NASA estimates that EOSDIS development will cost around $3 billion through fiscal year 2000. Given the unprecedented scope of the EOS effort and the critical importance of EOSDIS, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology asked GAO to examine several key aspects of NASA'S development approach, including the extent to which EOSDIS (1) will use prototyping to reduce system development costs and risks, and (2) may require technologies that are beyond the current state of the art. Background Central to the EOS program is a series of space-based observatories i containing a variety of instruments that will collect data about the earth on 1 a continual basis beginning in 1998. The data from these spacecraft will be sent to seven distributed data centers that, as the core of EOSDIS, will ' process, archive, and distribute that data to the scientific community. NASA bills EOSDIS as a comprehensive system that will bring together data from many sources to serve the needs of scientists performing integrated, interdisciplinary studies of the earth. In addition to data from the EOS observatories, EOSDIS is intended to be flexible enough to include previously archived data; new measurements from other non-Eos spacecraft; various ground-, ocean-, and …