NASA is planning to cut more than 5,000 jobs without Congressional approval, and insiders fret that institutional knowledge is being lost ahead of critical missions.
Just RIFfing: Last week, the US space agency began offering early retirement, deferred resignation, and in some cases incentive payments of up to $25,000 each to induce workers to leave the agency.
Acting administrator Janet Petro told employees in an internal email, viewed by Payload, that making changes “before all the details of our future structure and funding are known” gives employees time to “make informed choices” because “waiting for complete certainty would have left little time for planning.”
After voluntary departures are complete in late July, Petro said further staff reductions could come in a reorganization the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, with a focus on cutting bureaucracy, divesting “underused NASA-held properties,” and relying on AI to fill gaps.
“We are not doing any [reductions in force],” Petro said June 17 at the Paris Air Show. “We are not currently, and hopefully will never get into that position where we have to do involuntary workforce reduction.”
Embrace the challenge: President Donald Trump’s budget envisions cutting nearly a third of all NASA employees, including one in five workers at Johnson Space Center in Texas and almost half the staff at Goddard Space Center in Maryland, where deep cuts to science programs are expected to hit hardest.
What’s the plan: There is clear daylight between the White House’s NASA vision and what Congress aims to fund. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who leads NASA oversight in the Senate, added instructions to the budget reconciliation bill that would restore $10B in NASA funding the White House intends to cut.
Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), who leads NASA oversight in the House, said at the Paris Air Show that he supports Cruz’s proposal and that the White House budget plan is “not set in stone.” (Babin’s congressional district includes JSC.)
Asked what kind of analysis the agency has done to align these layoffs with potential future missions, a NASA spokesperson declined to share the agency’s workforce optimization plan, but said that “these steps will help ensure we deliver on our core goals, including the Moon and Mars, while also being responsible stewards of taxpayer resources.”
Petro’s email noted that this reorganization will be “shaped by resources Congress appropriates.”
We’ve seen this movie before: There’s precedent for the administration having to reverse cuts amid changing priorities. When Israel launched a bombing campaign against Iran last week, the US public diplomacy agency Voice of America had to rehire Farsi-speaking staffers who were put on administrative leave during a March cost-cutting round.
NASA engineers who spoke to Payload worried that staff cuts could threaten institutional knowledge needed to deliver on missions that Congress seems likely to authorize. With continued uncertainty over who will actually lead the agency, some fear that deep personnel cuts could amount to “soft cancellation” for certain programs, even if Congress does back them.
This story has been updated with additional comment from NASA.
