NASA has masked the true cost of the Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule by neglecting to say what these deep-space systems will cost to build and operate over the decades the agency plans to use them, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. NASA so far has put only two SLS missions on the manifest: a late-2017 test launch of an unmanned Orion into lunar space followed by a repeat of the mission in 2021 with crew onboard. NASA officials told GAO auditors it expects to have spent at least $22 billion on SLS and Orion through 2021, an estimate that does not include the cost of building the SLS launcher for the second mission, the government watchdog wrote in a May 9 report, "Actions Needed to Improve Transparency and Assess Long-Term Affordability of Human Exploration Programs."
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