The Juno mission – shown here in an illustration with a background of an image of Jupiter taken from the space vehicle – would have been canceled pursuant to the 2026 budget request of the Trump administration. Credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH
Takeaway Keyway:
- Hundreds of NASA employees protested proposed budget cuts and political changes.
- These changes threaten the safety, safety and success of NASA’s mission.
- The cuts significantly reduce funding for scientific programs and the workforce.
- Employees fear retaliation for talking about these actions.
More than 280 current and ex of NASA employees have warned that “quick and expensive changes dictated by the White House will have” terrible “consequences for the space agency.
On Monday, the 56th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, the staff of each Nasa center and the management of the mission addressed a letter to the Agency’s provisional administrator, the transport secretary Sean Duffy. The letter represents the formal dissent of employees to policies who say “threaten to waste public resources, compromise human security, weaken national security and undermine the basic mission of NASA”.
The signatures were collected by Stand Up for Science, a non -profit organization created in February to oppose the cuts to federal scientific agencies. In addition to NASA staff, the signatories include important scientists, activists, politicians and Nobel graduates.
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In a declaration a FlyNASA’s press secretary, Bethany Stevens, seemed to reject the credibility of the group, saying that it defends the science “Radical progress, discriminations [diversity, equity, and inclusion] Principles. “Stevens said that the administration has” proposed billions of dollars for NASA science “despite a huge cut to the scientific programs in the balance of the tax year of the White House.
More than half of the signatories of the letter has chosen to remain anonymous “because of the culture of fear of retaliation cultivated by this administration”, they wrote. Despite having raised concerns, they said, the employees are “pressure to implement harmful measures”.
“The main programmatic changes at NASA must be strategically implemented so that the risks are carefully managed,” reads the letter. “We are forced to speak when our leadership gives priority at the political moment for human security, scientific progress and efficient use of public resources. These cuts are arbitrary and have been issued in the challenge of the law on the allocation of the congress”.
Signatories who spoke to the CNN e The New York Times – Some on condition of anonymity – they paint a picture of an agency in which safety and skills are eroded and employees are frightened in silence. Many of them – at least 3,000, or 1 out of 6 of the almost 18,000 public employees of the Agency, for CNN – are preparing to leave due to a combination of closures of structures and incentives for cutting the workforce, such as the delayed resignation offers.
Their dissent follows bases similar to employees of the National Institutes of Health (NiH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). More than 100 signatories of the latter were placed on administrative leave.
“We are afraid of the twisted The New York Times. “We go to the bathroom to talk to each other and look under the stalls to make sure that no one else is there before speaking.”
On Monday afternoon, NASA announced the resignation of Makenzie Lystrup, Director of Goddard since April 2023.
“Seven Dissents” to NASA leadership
The employees directed their dissent to Duffy, that President Donald Trump appointed Nasa’s provisional administrator at the beginning of this month. Duffy took the reins from the administrator of acting Janet Petro and will fill the void of leadership until Trump selects an alternative to Jared Isaacman, whose appointment for a permanent role was canceled in June.
According to the procedural requirements of NASA for formal dissent, the staff have the “right to take the problem in the organization, also to the administrator of NASA, if necessary.”
The authors of the letter have issued “seven dissidents” compared to the recent actions they support will have “catastrophic impacts”, some of which have already been heard. For example, they urged Duffy to reject the changes to the technical authority of NASA who said that they are “driven by something different from the safety and the guarantee of the mission”.
Created in 2003 in the wake of the space shuttle Columbia Disaster, the technical authority is part of the agency’s system and safety sales. The authors indicated a town hall in June, during which the leaders of the agency revealed the plans to make the unit more “efficient”. A “culture of organizational silence” created in the last six months, have said, “represents a dangerous turning from the lessons learned following the Columbia disaster”.
The letter also targeted the budget request of the White House, which proposes to cut the high -level funding of NASA by almost 25 percent and reduce its workforce of almost a third. Both would have fallen at their lower levels by the Apollo era.
The exploration programs of the human space are provided for a modest thrust at the expenses of funding for science and other programs. The management of the Science Mission (SMD), for example, deals with a 47 %cut, that all the former living SMD garments have rejected.
“The United States have not returned [to the moon] Since 1972, “said Stevens.” It is a shame and means that we should not continue along the same path in which we have been for decades. We have to revisit what works and what does not. “
Some projects on the cutting block, such as the capsule of Orion crew, the space launching system and the mission to return the sample of Mars, have fought to hit the key milestones. But others, including the Lunar Gateway Space Station and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, are satisfying program costs and expectations.
“To ensure that NASA offers for the American people, we are continually evaluating the life cycles of the missions, not to support obsolete or low price missions,” said Stevens.
Many projects, such as the X -ray Observatory of Chandra, the Juno spaceship and the atmosphere of Mars and volatile evolution (Maven), are active and fully financed by the congress. Discussion or cancellation, the employees said: “It represents a permanent loss of capacity for the United States both in space and on earth”.
RELATED: The Senate’s allocation committee rejects the cuts in the NASA budget of 2026
They also argued that these programs support American national security and a considerable economic return. They invited to cancel NASA’s participation in international missions with partners such as the European Space Agency (ESA).
“The basic research in space sciences, aeronautics and administration of the earth are intrinsically government functions that cannot and will not be occupied by the private sector”, the authors wrote.
At the beginning of this month, average online Ars Technica He reported that NASA has ordered some leaders of the program to prepare the “closure” plans, which the staff said is an attempt to enforce the budget before it is approved by the congress. The move received bipartisan sentence from legislators. During the weekend, the senate appropriate voted to restore funding for different scientific missions in the viewfinder. The recent reconciliation law led by the Republicans, meanwhile, assigns $ 10 billion to finance Orion, SLS and Gateways.
Rejection from both sides of the corridor could potentially save thousands of jobs in the public and private sector while NASA supports with an exodus of staff at the agency level. Further reductions in force – that the agency leaders said they could or cannot happen – could have an impact on over 5,000 employees.
Stevens said that any staff reduction will be “designed to protect critical security roles”. But the dissenting staff warned that the departure employees will bring with them a precious knowledge and experience.
The authors also called the programs proposed for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (deia) and the STEM involvement office a “critical blow” for the agency’s future workforce. Yes, some deia offices were closed and employees were ordered to rub the web pages of terms such as “women in leadership” and “environmental justice”.
“The dismantling of this American institution is a parody,” said Colette Delawalla, founder and manager of Stand Up for Science. “Nobody voted for this. Nobody voted to voluntarily give our global domain in science to other nations.”
The Trump administration has positioned the exploration of the human space, in particular on Mars – as a priority. Stevens said that the budget “will inspire the American people again” and will help the United States “win the space race”. Mars Exploration claims, however, warn that science cuts can be antithetical to this goal.
“Cut the overall scientific budget of the NASA of 50 percent … it would involve mass layoffs of the same people we need to bring us to Mars,” said James Burk, executive director of the Mars Society, in a post on social media in May. “I join all my colleagues to oppose this Draconian proposal.”
Note of the editor: This story appeared for the first time Fly.
