Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) management of space science data to determine whether NASA: (1) archived all of its valuable data; and (2) had a mechanism in place to allow scientists to provide input on what types of data should be archived.
GAO found that NASA: (1) did not archive data from some important missions and its principal data archival and dissemination facility, the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), had incomplete data for many important missions; (2) had a policy that permitted destruction of valuable data; (3) did not enforce its policy requiring the preparation of project data management plans for each mission; and (4) needed better management safeguards, since current policies permitted the disposal of original data and there was no guarantee that analyzed data were archived before original data were destroyed. GAO also found that scientists: (1) participated in the NASA Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee and its subcommittees and in management operations working groups, but did not participate in mission-level teams that made critical data management decisions; and (2) believed that their participation in key data management areas was ineffective.
