 to get us started. Hello and welcome to this virtual town hall to discuss the results of the psyche independent review board report as well as NASA and JPL's response. We have speaking to us today. Thomas Urbuchen, the associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters, Laurie Leschen, the director of the Jet Culsion Laboratory. Laurie Glaze, the division director for the planetary sciences division at NASA headquarters, and also Tom Young, who was the chair of the independent review board. I won't speak any longer except to say that we do have questions that we will try to answer at the end. There is a link in the chat for where you can put those in. And with that, I'll hand it off to Thomas Urbuchen. Well, thanks so much, Karen. I really appreciate that and thanks for everybody who's participating right now, both the speaker but also those who have dialed in to hear this. I want to just quickly bring up the speed of where we are today at the beginning of this presentation. You of course know that last, well, August 1st, we were hoping to launch psyche, but ahead of that, the JPL team and the psyche team basically decided and we agreed at headquarters that we were not ready for launch. We therefore launched, kind of started an independent review to really look at the psyche mission. We did so as a team, both JPL and headquarters together because frankly, the only way we're going to be successful in all of these missions is together and we understand that deeply. What we have already decided and frankly, because the decision was really urgent because there's launch providers that need to be informed. And frankly, also the team want to take the ambiguity of the table right away is that in fact, we have determined that the psyche mission will continue based on the input you're going to see here. And the launch when there was no planned October 10 to 23 and 2023. And of course, you all know, I won't be walking around with an as a batch then, but trust me, friends, I'm going to be there, right? You know, to really see that amazing mission going to the sky. Of course, watch this recently, I felt in heavy launch and, you know, the boosters coming back and I really look forward to seeing that again and again with the team that is there. I want to tell you that the IRB you're going to hear is an IRB that, as always, especially when my good friend Tom Young chairs things. And I just want to thank him and the entire team. It's an IRB that's very direct and really revealing. I want to make sure that everybody understands that we're going to take these recommendations very seriously. And it's not just words. It's already actions we've implemented. You see some of these things already being talked about. What you should also be aware of though. And I want to say that as kind of the head of science at NASA that we see a lot of the issues that are being discussed in this and the band review board to be in other places as well. So if you're coming in from another, calling in from another company, from another center and so forth, you know, perhaps one good way to listen to that is to really actually replace the time if you hear somebody barking that would be Luna. I apologize for that. Apparently she saw another pedestrian or a mailman. So I apologize for that. I just got boosted with my COVID booster. That's why I'm not with Tom in the room. But anyway, what I'd like to do is just quickly turn it over to Laurie Leschen as one of the co-conveners. Go ahead, Laura. Thanks, Thomas and Luna. Good morning, everyone from the West Coast. As co-convener of the IRB with Thomas, I'll start by saying that I really appreciate the thoughtful work of the entire board and especially their chair, Tom Young, long time friend of NASA and an incredible aerospace leader. I also really deeply appreciate our collaboration with NASA headquarters as Thomas already mentioned, specifically with Thomas and Laurie as we work to move forward together from here. As some of you probably know, I'm a new director of JPL and so as a new director, it was especially important to me to have an independent view of this situation and I will be forever grateful to all the members of the IRB who worked incredibly hard over the past several months. They spent the better part of six weeks at JPL over the last couple of months working with us to understand the issues and the situation related to the delay of Psyche, but also how they might impact JPL and NASA more broadly, as Thomas already mentioned. I just want to say I also appreciate that the IRB was complimentary in their report of JPL's open and honest support of all of their efforts. I'm really proud of our team for being so open to feedback and as Thomas already said, well, we have a storied history of achievement here at JPL and that continues to today and it's so important that we embrace the opportunity here to learn and move forward and improve. And so with that, I think we should hear from Tom, but I'm going to kick it back to you, Thomas, to get the IRB report out started. Well, Karen, take it away. Thanks so much, Lori. All right, we will pass to Tom Young and just to be clear, we will have the report posted online by the end of this town hall. We're doing the presentation first and then it will be up at nasa.gov slash reports for people to look at as well. And with that, Tom. Good afternoon. The IRB had its first meeting on July 19th and today we complete our initial charter and with the release of the report, as was just mentioned. The first slide actually shows our charter and we were asked to look at all of the factors that were involved in the delay of the psyche launch. We were asked to determine why there was such a lack of visibility in recognizing these factors in adequate time to be able to proceed with the launch. And then probably more important was we were asked to look at the path forward and to make have our comments on the path forward relative to having a maximum probability of mission success. The other part of question that we were asked to look at was whether the psyche issue is unique to psyche or whether indicative of broader GPL institutional issues. The answer to that is not unique to psyche and I'll talk about that. And the final charter question was if there are broader institutional issues and determine corrective actions that are appropriate for both current and future projects and I'll talk about that also. Next please. The only thing I'll say about this overview is that psyche has an incredibly important scientific mission to look at a highly metallic asteroid that spends its time between Jupiter and between Mars and Jupiter and it's an opportunity to really learn a lot about this kind of an asteroid but in addition to that to really learn a lot about the beginning of our solar system. The only other item I have on here I want to just draw note to is that the psyche cost estimates approximately a billion dollars. The reason I put that there is just I want to indicate psyche is not a flagship mission but it is a very large mission and very challenging mission and that was very obvious as we went about doing our review. Next please. What I'd like to do now is to walk into our psyche findings and recommendations and I will kind of highlight these and the details of these are included in the report that is now I believe available to everyone. Next please. The first finding was that indeed the guidance control and navigation software as well as test bits, maturity were the dominant factor as to why the psyche launch was delayed. The IRB also assessed that there were other factors that were important and could have also caused a launch delay. These were in the area of software issues, incomplete V and V activities including fault protection and operational readiness and it's probably just worth noting that this is a solar electric propulsion system on psyche which makes the crew's mission more challenging than a typical planetary mission. Next please. Our recommendations for this were pretty straightforward and that is we need to put together a plan that had a high confidence of success to achieve the launch window that was identified which is October of 23 and to also take a look at some of the details of the work that had been done to date to assure that they were up to the technical and scientific excellence necessary for a mission like psyche. Next please. Management communications, this was one of the things that was surprising I guess I would say to and a reason for our move being put together but within the project there was the senior levels of the psyche project did not recognize these problems in adequate time to be able to impact the 22 launch. We spent a lot of time with the working level people on the project and it's interesting they were pretty aware of significant problems that existed and these problems just did not move forward to the top of the program and one of the reasons probably was we found kind of a culture that said you've got to prove a problem as a problem before we're going to act on it and that really delayed any action. Next please. Additional findings were that beyond the project within the senior levels of the Jeopardy and Laboratory the problems were also not recognized in adequate time to respond both by senior management and also by the line management of the organization. I will point out and this will be something I'll talk about fair amount throughout the presentation but the fact that JPL has really more work than the human resources available to accomplish it requires a lot of management of the of the incredible staff at JPL to be sure all the projects have the capabilities they need and this takes so much time of the senior level people and the line management organization that it delutes their ability to really interact in great detail in the projects. Next please. So our recommendation again is a regionally straightforward one we really need to have a process that is open credible responsive and and that's recommendation one of all of the senior people and the line organization at JPL really have to establish a process that allows them to be significantly engaged in the development of projects like Psyche so that there's a broad understanding of status and risk. That's the same thing that's true with the with the line organization and I'll talk later about the line organization needs. Clearly some augmentation. Next please. The next area is staffing on Psyche and we really found multiple issues with staffing. One is there was not the experience level and the managers of technical personnel necessary for us a project of the challenge of Psyche in multiple positions. That I mean there weren't really very good people working on the project it's just that the lack of experience was the area that we cited we found several other areas that were necessary for corrective action that are listed on this slide. An example there was no project chief engineer there was no cogsman engineer for the critically important GNC software and and that contributed to I think the GNC software issues not being fully understood in sufficient time for credible response. Next please. The recommendation is that like a dozen ten to a dozen experienced people be added to the project that in addition to that in terms of sheer numbers of repeat project people who were needed to be added and that the key positions that I talked about earlier or staff were very capable people that constituted our staffing recommendations. Next please. Next item is COVID and I guess the one of the things when we started in this we were kind of cautious that we wanted to understand how much COVID impacted this activity. It's pretty clear that COVID was not the root cause but it's also pretty clear that COVID did impact the activity and was a contributing factor to the delay and the kind of things that COVID impacted were things like walking the floor dropping in for discussions teams interacting with each other just didn't happen during the COVID era. I might also just make a comment that an observation is highly integrated very knowledgeable knows what's going on interacts informally a lot with each other and in a way that is kind of an informal safety net that helps find problems like psyche to identify them. That informal network really disappeared during the lockdown from COVID which was a real disadvantage and hopefully that will be something that will be reconstituted. We also have significant concerns about the amount of hybrid work that may be implemented for psyche and I know you can hear a little bit more about that I think later in the presentation. Next please. So our recommendations really are get back to the informal communications mode that has been so successful and relative to the hybrid work minimize it to the maximum feasible practical for psyche. Next please. Metrics. By metrics I mean schedules, failure or risk assessments, management information systems and just kind of have a general comment we found these on psyche to be highly inadequate and that made it also difficult to recognize problems in adequate time to be responsive. And next our recommendation is fundamentally to put in place a high quality management information system as we go forward with psyche. So there are milestones that are clearly indicative of status and a good understanding of status versus actual and inner risk that may be taken be obvious not only to the project but to all levels of management. Next please. So psyche summary and conclusions. Next please. The first one is just to again emphasize the scientific merits of psyche are extraordinary and are important considerations to carrying forward with the program. We spent a lot of time with the principal investigator who's the lead for the for psyche program. She attended many of our meetings and gave us presentations. She was highly involved throughout the program and highly involved and put it together the path forward and I think very commendable were our contributions. Psyche issues as I mentioned were were significant and much more extensive than originally was understood. This range is in the staffing area, communications area, the hybrid work schedule, software and system test bed development, B and V activities, operational readiness and shark comings in the metrics. Psyche issues and the recommendations that we have made will require a significant amount of effort and really experienced personnel at all levels of the organization. The other item leading into the second part of my presentation is that many psyche issues are direct indicators or the direct result of JPL institutional issues. COVID was a factor. Kind of our bottom line activity on our psyche part of our investigation was that we reviewed the go forward plan and we believe JPL has established an executable plan for a 2023 launch. Next please. So as I said, the psyche issues are not unique to psyche. They are indicative of broader institutional issues and I'm going to touch on that now. Next please. And next JPL currently has really an unprecedented workload of very, very important projects. They have two flagship missions, Europa Clipper and Mars am return, two projects in the discovery class psyche and hermit house, two projects that have significant payload implications, particularly in the radar area and a lot of other smaller programs and activities. And there is a large imbalance today between the workload and the available resources at JPL. This is most acute in terms of experienced managers in areas like systems engineering, GNCA software, and adionics. This imbalance clearly was a root cause of the psyche issues and in our judgment, adversely affects all flight project activity at JPL. Next please. So what are our recommendations? The flight project really must be fully staffed from the beginning. This imbalance in the workforce activity is a the timing of it is critical. This is not a problem we're forecasting. This is a problem that exists today. The psyche is an example of the major problems this imbalance is causing. The IRB believes that to kind of raise attention to the urgency that a into the first quarter 20 calendar 23 is a significant time to have a milestone that says much of the corrective action should be implemented by that time period. The IRB also recognizes that there are some things that will take longer. And when that happens, then a detailed plan of action really is necessary that requires approval by the three principles that are involved, namely JPL, Caltech, and NASA. Next please. We actually put together a chart of options. I call this a shopping list of things that may be necessary to achieve balance. Our purpose in doing this was to give some indications of our thoughts in this regard, but also to show this is not a problem with the easiest solution. And so this is a list and you can see what the items are. It ranges from no new flight projects to canceling or land a flight project to aggressive recruiting. And so these are important items. It's not meant to be inclusive. They're clearly other items and I'm sure JPL will identify early items as they go through the process. Next please. Line organization. And most organizations like JPL, a line organization has a responsibility for maintaining the technical excellence of the institution and applying that technical excellence both in staffing of flight projects and also being significantly involved in flight projects that they have an understanding of status, risk, and they're able to identify problems and solutions early in the implementation of a program. And they really in that regard represent a critical safety net. The circumstance with fan power issues that existed JPL is that technical leadership has really migrated from the line organization to the flight projects which we understand is was necessary or is necessary today. But without the line organization capability of providing the safety net, things like the psyche issues will become the norm and not the exception. And the other thing is that the RV really recognizes that the institutional need for more experienced managers and lead engineers is a primary cause of this erosion of capabilities in the line organizations. Again, that doesn't mean the people there are not highly capable. There's just not an experience or enough of them. Next please. The solution, well, there's also two divisions there that have special importance in implementation of flight projects and they are significantly understaffed on the need of the sort of focus. Next please. Our recommendations are the line organization needs to have experienced people added. And this is part of an item in the overall pursuit of the question of achieving the right balance between programs, flight projects, and JPL institutional capabilities. Next please. Senior management engagement, as I mentioned, not significant or sufficient penetration and psyche issues. The fact that there's just so many projects, smaller projects there also complicates this process and the lack of a good metric system also complicates this process. Next please. So our recommendations are that JPL really needs to establish some very regular meetings, formal process, informal techniques of drop-in visits, prioritizing the large number of activities so that the most important get the attention of the senior management, senior line organization. And that the metrics issue really needs to be codified into a JPL-wide effort to to greatly enhance the capability to track progress versus a plan and such risk on flight projects. Next please. Hiring and retention, I'm only going to say that we are in a world today, not only in JPL but throughout the aerospace industry, that hiring is a real challenge, retention is a real challenge, and it takes very special activities which we highlight and recommend. Next please. And next please. Hybrid work, today, and what I really shouldn't say today, when we were conducting our review, we were really struck by the fact that how much the hybrid work policy at that time could implement projects like Psyche and also projects like the clipper and sample return. The other factor is that it also has an impact on schedules, has an impact on cost, has an impact on potential technical risk. So the hybrid work policy really is something that requires very careful attention because on one side is the idea that projects really do benefit by in-person work. And the second thing is that post COVID, there clearly is a work force characteristic of the hybrid work has become more important. So balancing that is the real challenge for JPL. Next please. And that really summarizes the recommendations also. Next please. Caltech is a player of this. They're really three primary players, JPL, Caltech and NASA. We had some very constructive interactions with the Caltech leadership. Our observations are that Caltech needs to be more aware of flight project status of progress and needs to be more engaged in supporting the overall workforce challenges and strategic issues challenges at JPL. Next please. Next please. Next please. Next please. So our summary and conclusions for the institution are that there are really four dominant institutional issues, balancing work and personnel availability, the erosion of the line organization technical acumen, the insufficient JPL senior management engagement to flight projects and the post pandemic work environment. These issues are being, you know, they really will have a significant impact on the implementation of JPL flight projects. Many of the psyche issues can be traced directly to these institutional issues. It's hard to overemphasize how important is the correction of these issues are from the urgency standpoint. They're acute today and failure act, which I don't expect by the way, but will clearly result in more psyches and potentially inflate failures. I do want to conclude by saying that NASA and JPL support of our activities was incredible and added enormously to our ability to accomplish what we were able to accomplish at the time that we had available. And we have great optimism that both in terms of psyche and the JPL institutional situations, but the teams of NASA and JPL are proceeding in a manner that we have great optimism will result in significant success. And without I say thank you very much. Thank you so much, Tom. Pardon me. We will go next to Lori Glaze. All right. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon or good morning. I'd like to first start. Thank you so much, Tom, for sharing the findings and the recommendations of the IRB. I also want to just take a moment to say, as Lori noted at the beginning, JPL has such a long history of incredible contributions to the planetary program. And of course, we look forward to working together in the future. And I really appreciate the efforts of Lori and all of the folks at JPL for their participation in the IRB review. And as we work together to go forward and find solutions. So what I'd like to do here is just kind of walk through some highlights of the NASA response to the findings and recommendations. And I believe then Lori will hit on the JPL responses to the recommendations. So what you'll find in the, you'll find the NASA response with the report when it gets posted at the end of this briefing. And I also wanted to note that we will be getting back with the IRB in the spring to assess the progress that's been made both on Psyche in particular, but also on the institutional findings that you heard. So there will be a checkpoint coming up in the near future where we'll have a chance to see, to check our progress back with Tom and the rest of the IRB. So in general, on all of the findings that you heard about, we concur, but I'll walk through some of the specifics. So on the first finding for the general Psyche issues and concerns, as you heard from Tom, the Psyche project has developed a plan forward that will support a launch readiness state in October of 2023. We have looked at that, we concur as well. And that was the basis for the decision that you heard about at the end of October. So we're very excited about continuing that mission and looking forward to the great science that will be done. As part of the plan going forward, we're addressing some of the other findings as well. The Psyche management and communications concerns, again, NASA concurred with the findings and the recommendations. And just from our perspective, we've seen already that the project is implementing organizational changes that address these communication barriers inside the team. And that will continue to watch, but that seems to be going well. I also wanted to note that, of course, it's been said, it's not just Psyche and JPL, but of course, NASA headquarters. We have some responsibility here as well. And from our side, Planetary Science Division and our Planetary Missions Program Office are going to increase our in-person presence at JPL and at Kennedy, where the spacecraft is going forward so that we can work more closely as part of the Psyche team as well. We've heard about the Psyche staffing. You'll probably hear more from Laurie on this one. But from the headquarters perspective, what we've seen is that they have added appropriately experienced leaders in the project staff throughout the project now, including they've appointed the project chief engineer and the guidance navigation control cognizant engineer, lead for fault protection, et cetera. So those key positions are filled and that's, I think, going to position them for success going forward. On COVID and the COVID impacts on Psyche, this is something that I think, you know, the COVID has impacted all of our missions and every one of us individually. And these impacts continue to materialize. And we certainly concur with those findings that COVID certainly contributed here. So we know that, again, many organizations have struggled with how best to balance the on-site and off-site work following the post-COVID changes. I know JPL is working on these things, as is the Psyche project, as are we all. So we'll be all working towards that in the future. On the Psyche metrics, again, we concur here as well. I'm not going to go into the details. You can look at the responses there, but there are a variety of actions that are going to be taken here to help make sure that JPL and NASA can have the insight and the metrics in order to adequately monitor progress towards successful launch next October. For the Standing Review Board and that review process, again, we concur with the intent of those recommendations. And specifically, we think that there's some areas where we can strengthen the SRB approach, one being improving the communication, clearer communication of concerns from the SRB, and then also the appropriate follow-up on issues that shouldn't be set aside until the next lifecycle review. I think that, again, there are a variety of changes in expectations from SRBs, not just Psyche's SRB, but others that we can take some lessons from this report and help us improve our own processes. On the JPL-Maxar relationship, I think the IRB did an excellent job here of looking at that relationship and identifying some areas where we can learn going forward on all of our missions to really be carefully consider how we work with our commercial partners and industry partners, making sure that we have very clear roles and responsibilities when we are going forward. So I think those are going to be good guidelines for us in the future as well. So I'd like to switch over to the institutional findings. I think that Laurie will address those primarily. But there's one of the IRB's findings that has implications that I'd like to discuss with you all here today. The review board, as you heard from Tom, found an imbalance between the workload and the available JPL resources. Basically, JPL has more work than their workforce can support right now. We've got working on so many wonderful missions and so many great things that they have going on out there. Unfortunately, Psyche is now the second JPL managed discovery mission that has missed its launch window. Recall that Insight missed theirs a few years back. The next JPL managed discovery mission is the Veritas mission to Venus. After long deliberations, I'd have to say that we intend to postpone the Veritas launch ready in the state to no earlier than 2031, approximately a three-year delay. This postponement can offset both the workload workforce imbalance for at least those three years and also can offset and provide some of the increased funding that will be required to continue Psyche towards that 2023 launch. We are going to provide some funding now in FY23 for the orderly stand-down of Psyche. And we're also going to continue to fund at a relatively low level, but we'll continue to fund the science team to support them so they can continue to think forward to what that next launch opportunity looks like. I wanted to just take an opportunity to say this was a very hard decision, extremely difficult, not something that we want to do, particularly on PI-led missions, but just to remind folks that in addition to the recommendations and findings from the IRB, the PSD budget continues to be strained. We've got responding to COVID impacts across the board, a variety of other issues, inflation and supply chain challenges, and so we recognize all of those are there. What we'd like to do in the time between in this three-year period is to pursue additional funding to support both Veritas and the next discovery AO through the upcoming budget processes. Hey, Lori, do you mind if I just quickly chime in? Absolutely, please do. Is it everything? And I think there's just a little typo in what you said. The stand-down is on Veritas, not on Psyche. Oh gosh, Veritas, I'm so sorry. Thank you. I didn't even realize I said it. Thank you so much. Oh, it's fine, it's fine, happens to me also. Go ahead. Yes, thank you. Yeah, the stand-down is on Veritas. Oh boy, that was a big, big blunder there. So yeah, I'll just wrap it up by saying I know that this is a wound to our Venus science community, but sometimes we are really called to make some very, very tough decisions and some that require some very difficult trade-offs. Although it's delayed, Veritas is a very important part of our decade to Venus along with Da Vinci and Envision. And I look forward to the science that they're going to achieve. And with that, I think I'm going to hand it over to Lori to talk about some of the JPL responses. Thanks so much, Lori, from Lori to Lori. Here we go. So listen, this is a serious business, and I just want to start by saying JPL accepts the board's findings and we're fully committed to addressing the issues that they raised. They raised issues specifically related to the psyche mission launch delay and also challenges that impact us JPL as an institution, including technical challenges, flight project staffing, team communication, and engagement of senior leadership in our missions. And I will say the board, you know, you heard a lot of that discussion here already, they also found that these issues which were, which directly impacted psyche were exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. And I just want to emphasize that no other mission at JPL had its development more firmly overlapping the COVID pandemic than psyche. They were confirmed six months before the pandemic started. And so almost their entire, in our NASA speak phase CD was on top of COVID times. And obviously still coming out of that and recovering, but they really took a lot of the brunt of the impact. And so, you know, we may slightly disagree about the importance of COVID here. I think it really, really impacted how well this team and all teams in almost every organization could operate. Anyway, we all know it was absolutely a factor. So in alignment with IRB's recommendations at JPL, we've already taken many specific actions to position psyche for success. We're committed to having this important mission be back on track. And I would argue it is back on track to a successful launch to operations and ultimately pathbreaking science. I am an extraterrestrial materials person. And I want to see what this metal asteroid is like. It's going to be an incredible mission. We have worked really hard with the IRB's help and support and NASA headquarters to rebalance and enhance the JPL workforce that is a part of the psyche team as well as better aligning the team structure with the work to go. So we've added personnel, changed some personnel and restructured the team. And we are very well aligned with our plan on the work from here to launch some 11 months or so from now with significant margin on that 11 months. The team created a detailed plan to ensure mission success. And as you heard, the IRB, JPL and NASA are all confident in that plan, if I may speak for you, Thomas and Laurie here, that we're all confident in that plan forward. And that's why Thomas made the decision, NASA made the decision to continue Psyche for their launch now 11 months from now. So that's Psyche. On the institutional side, so consistent with the IRB's requests, we expect to have addressed. Did you want to jump in, Thomas? No, absolutely not. That's funny. Do not and say yes, we agree. Not yes, yes. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no, your support's been incredible. So consistent with what the IRB requested, we expect to have most of the institutional findings addressed no later than March of 2023, that first quarter of next calendar year, with any actions that are longer term, as Tom Young mentioned, that some of these things are longer term challenges that we need to face into. Those actions will be clearly defined in underway, and we will be meeting regularly with headquarters and in that March timeframe with the IRB to show our progress. I'm really confident we'll have a lot of progress to show, because we've already taken significant steps to begin addressing the issues that the IRB identified, including the appointment of a highly experienced leader to oversee our institutional response reporting directly to me. We've already made changes to our organizational reporting structure and reviews, which, along with other things we will still do, are designed to increase institutional oversight and insight into our missions. We're going to be looking at our remote work policies. You heard that as a big part of this discussion in a forward looking way, really trying to balance that flexibility that we all want as individuals with what teams really need to do the kind of complex team-based work that we are so well known for here at JPL. We're committed to doing that, but in a forward looking way, we're not going backwards. We're going forwards. Also, by the way, I just want to highlight that rebuilding that informal safety net that Tom Young talked about. To me, that was a real kind of lightning bolt moment in the conversations with the IRB about just how important those informal interactions are in kind of catching problems early and addressing them when there are small problems so that they don't become big problems. That safety net is really important. Those are all conversations that we're starting here on the lab. The way we think about effectively using the hybrid work environment is going to be a big part of our response. Also, following the recommendations of the IRB, JPL is committed to doing everything that's necessary to fill all the critical roles on psyche, which we have done at this point. That action is complete, although people are people and so we're always continuing to work on making sure teams have the people they need. Also, other missions, high priority missions at JPL, making sure that we're focused on staffing all of our missions for NASA. We're committed to meeting near-term milestones and upcoming launch dates. We're working these staffing challenges and opportunities at an incredibly high level at JPL and throughout our organization. We're talking about it here in my office all literally every day. We're working through it and we'll do so again in a forward-looking way. It's not just about hiring. It's about partnering more. It's about thinking about how we can collaborate across the space industry to get this really exciting work that we have on our plate done and these great missions to launch. Things like Europa Clipper, which is now less than two years from launch and on track and doing great. We're very committed to these things. I'll start to wind down here by saying that I believe that our technical leadership is fundamentally strong and that's evidenced by decades of mission success that is ongoing today. Landing rowers on Mars in the middle of the pandemic. I mean, there's a lot of evidence of this. I don't need to quote it to you all, but we also recognize that Psyche revealed shortcomings that we need to address and we're committed to strengthening our organization and our process in a purpose-driven way and a forward-looking way that recognizes that frankly the future demands more of us technically and how we lead and partner and in how we support our own teams in this new and dynamic post-pandemic environment. We have a history at JPL of overcoming adversity and beating the odds. So while I was hoping to be focused, this is not what I was hoping to be focused on in my first few months as director of JPL, but I know we will meet this moment and we'll continue to dare mighty things together. So again, thanks to everyone for your support and I'll turn it back to you, Thomas, I think. Yeah, look, Laurie, I really appreciate your comments and also you, Laurie Glaze. I really appreciate that. What I wanted to do is just close off in a couple minutes here and make two, three points. First of all, the standard that we want to have at JPL and that's the standard that Laurie Lession and I talk about all the time is the standard of excellence. The standard of excellence is not a given. It starts with every mission in new and requires attention and focus. Just the type of the type that Laurie Lession just talked about and we're very much aligned with this. To do that, we've used many times independent reviews, independent looks and we know that in fact these looks kind of reveal things and sometimes, it's kind of a blunt process and I just really want to thank Tom Young for doing that with the best way and then all the people who were there. When this happened with Psyche, but frankly what I talked about with Laurie Lession and Laurie Glaze right away, let's interpret this like a canary in a coal mine. Let's go solve this problem kind of assuming that it may be indicative of a broader set of issues which is exactly what in fact the IRB has revealed. For us again, what I said at the beginning, I'm going to say again now is we believe some of these broader problems are not just indicative of Psyche. Tom Young and team have told us they're indicative of JPL, but I just want to tell you as we look at work that is happening with other centers, with our industrial partners, we think that the challenges that come from that tremendous workforce changes during the last few years are challenges that we all want to work on together as an industrial community kind of focused on space. I'm going to stop with one final comment and just say how excited I am to have Psyche launch next year. I strongly believe and based on everything I've seen that will be successful in that, but also I'm excited I am to go forward with Veritas, which is just an incredible mission together with the mission over in Europe and of course Da Vinci, our in Goddard will really start this decade of focus on Venus, you know, the planet that we is so important right now. So with that, Karen, I'm going to kick it back to you. Hello, hello, thank you so much. We are going to move to the question and answer portion. Again, there have been links posted in the chat with that with those questions where you can put them in and vote them up. I have been putting them in as quickly as I can. A couple notes. The third question right now is when will the final report be released? I just want you to know that that is live now at nasa.gov slash reports. So you can see the NASA response as well as the report there. Additionally, we got a couple questions about for those people who weren't able to make it into the room for this Webex, this will be posted as a recording as soon as we can get it up when we're finished here and we will be sharing that URL by social media. So we will be giving that to people very soon. With that, we will start taking the questions and and take certainly as many of them as we can get through before our media telecom, which is supposed to start at 1pm. So the first question is what impact will psyches continuation have on the rest of the planetary mission budget? And will this delay? I don't know what that feels for. New Frontier. So Lori Glaze tossing that to you. Great. Thank you, Karen. It's a really important question. So first, let me start with the second part, which is the New Frontier's five call, just to point out that the draft AO is actually expected in November. It is coming out. There is not an anticipated delay. I do want to talk about the budget aspect, though, and I wanted to set a broader context than just the psyche impact on the discovery in the planetary budget. Let me just point out that I mentioned this a little bit in my comments, right? We are working and trying to accommodate across the board inflation increases that are coming through on every single mission that we are working on everywhere. That inflation is impacting our costs on every mission. We are also seeing these long lead. This is the supply chain challenges. These long lead items are requiring even longer times for procurement. So this means every single one of our projects is asking for funding, more funding earlier, which is impacting how our funding is phased. We've seen increases in the estimates for the phase E costs on several of our recent missions that are also impacting our overall budget. And then let's just talk about COVID for a second. We've had to absorb a lot of the COVID costs. We didn't get any additional offsetting funds for any of the COVID impacts that were realized for our missions that were in development. That said, and I think Lori alluded to this, not just did we put a Mars mission launch on time and on the surface, but we also launched Lucy on time and Dart on time. So honestly, I think considering the magnitude of the COVID impacts, I'm pretty proud of the record that we have of what we've been able to accomplish. But again, that does impact our overall budget. The last thing I want to say about budget is that if people who follow the appropriations and the planning budgets that we get, the budget that we were working under that planning budget when we made the two selections, it was actually higher than the budgets that we're looking at right now. Those have gone down somewhat. And so we're actually working under a more tightly constrained folks probably heard me talking in 22 that our appropriation was significantly lower than the request. And then the new request that has come out for FY 23 is lower again. And so we have several contributing factors to the stresses on our budget. Psyche is another one. We are looking to see how we balance all of those things going forward. The Veritas delay is going to help address some of that in the near term over the next three years or so. But we are going to be looking, as I said, for longer term solutions in that time period. Hopefully that provides a more full answer. Thank you. Thank you so much, Lori. We will move on to the next question, which I think is for Lori Leshen. How will you balance changes to remote work with the need to retain talent? Yeah, this is a huge challenge, honestly. I was really happy to hear Tom Young acknowledge it in his remarks too that we it is a balancing act, right? And this is what I mean when I talk about a forward looking solution. We can't just say, right, we got to go back like it was before the pandemic. That's I think not in the cards. What we need to do is acknowledge and understand that certain types of work is hard to do effectively remotely. We know that people's networks get smaller. That is that teams get more siloed. We know that it's hard to sort of touch those problems early because when you're not walking around. So teams clearly need more time together. And I think the way that we're actually implementing remote work right now isn't helping that. It's not necessarily that everyone needs to be here more, although I think there is a little bit of that, honestly. But it's that people need to be here kind of at the same time. It's no fun for anybody to drive all the way to the office here at JPL and then sit in your office all day on Webex because the rest of your team's not here, right? So I think there's a bit about how we're doing this that we need to do it smartly. And we need to acknowledge that the kind of flexibility that having hybrid options offers is something that's important to our workforce. So we're going to do our very best to balance those things. But it's clear that our teams need to be together more. And there are probably times, you know, in the pushups to big review and the pushups reviews and the pushups to launch where where we really are going to need those teams together more. So we're going to try and do it, you know, in a smart way. And yeah, so so I also hope and believe that with a mission like we have a mission sort of capital M mission at JPL, you know, exploring the frontiers of science with with robotic spacecraft is is so exciting that it's going to keep us together. And the last thing I'll say is we heard I have done it because I'm new. I have done recently some sessions called engage JPL where I've gotten people together to 300 people at a time. I've talked to 2500 JPLers in the last month about about how they're doing every single one of those sessions. One of the loudest pieces of input is the the newer JPLers are desperate for mentorship, hoping for more knowledge transfer, really wanting to engage with our more senior colleagues. And again, that is part of that informal safety net. We've got to rebuild it. It's not just because Tom Young is telling us we need to. It's our own people are saying we need to build that safety net better. And so that's what we're committed to trying to balance. I was just going to add to two large comments, which were very good. As strange as it may seem, I too was a young engineer at one time at NASA and spent a lot of time at JPL on flight projects. And I often reflect back on that experience. And not only did the experience certainly well throughout my professional career, but the other thing I really recall from that is the incredible excitement of being involved at the kinds of things that JPL does every day. So I guess I'm an optimist that says that, gee, to have the opportunity to work at JPL and to have the opportunity to be part of a group of people who are exploring space and learning new things and possibly even learning whether or not we're alone is so incredible. Driving into work seems like to be a small penalty in order to be able to have that extraordinary experience. You're hired, Tom, anytime. Thank you so much. We are up against the hour and we are transitioning into a media telecon now. There are obviously many questions we did not actually get to today. There was a lot to cover this recording, as I said, we'll go up live very shortly. And we are going to switch the media telecon starts at one will probably be just a couple minutes as we all transition into that. So for those who are moving to that will be just a few minutes late, but we'll start that soon. And we will try to address some of the overarching big questions here in that we don't want to let those go as well as address them in other ways with it as we can. So thank you very much. We're going to say goodbye for now. Thomas, do you want to say goodbye? Any last words and we'll reconvene at nasa.gov slash live where you'll be able to hear the media telecon? Thanks so much. Nothing else to add. Be with you in a moment again. Bye everybody and thanks for