Posted on 03/11/2025 11:35:21 AM PDT by Red Badger
NASA has begun implementing its reduction in force (RIF) approach, closing three offices and laying off staff in compliance with executive orders by the new administration that target the federal workforce.
NASA announced on Monday that it will be closing the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist; and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Branch of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Twenty-three employees will be affected by the cuts, according to SpacePolicyOnline.com.
The recent workforce cuts are in response to an executive order to end “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing,” and another to implement the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) workforce optimization initiative.
“While this will mean making difficult adjustments, we’re viewing this as an opportunity to reshape our workforce, ensuring we are doing what is statutorily required of us, while also providing American citizens with an efficient and effective agency,” Janet Petro, acting NASA administrator, wrote in a letter to the staff, according to NASA Watch, an independent blog not affiliated with the space agency.
NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy “brings together diverse, multidisciplinary experts to provide NASA leadership with analytic, strategic, and decisional insights in the form of quick-turn analyses, memos, and reports,” according to its website. The Office of the Chief Scientist serves as principal advisor to the NASA administrator on the agency’s science programs and “represents all of the scientific endeavors in the agency, ensuring they are aligned with and fulfill the administration’s science objectives,” NASA’s website reads.
Shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump in January, NASA moved to close offices related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) at the agency and cancel related contracts. That was in response to Trump’s executive order to terminate federal employees in diversity, equity, and inclusion roles.
The recent layoffs, on the other hand, are part of the administration’s efforts to reduce government employees and bureaucracy, while improving efficiency as part of the Elon Musk-led DOGE initiative. NASA isn’t the only federal agency forced to reduce its workforce in light of Trump’s recent orders. The U.S. weather agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is set to lay off approximately 20% of its workforce.
The latest workforce cuts are part of a worrying sign that NASA may be at risk of losing a large chunk of its science activities under the current administration, which seems to favor private spaceflight, as reflected in Trump’s pending choice of commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead the agency. DOGE’s leader Musk has also expressed dismay at the bureaucracy of national space programs, pushing for a more aggressive approach that is dismantling federal agencies. And as indicated by those looming NOAA cuts, the current administration doesn’t care for inconvenient truths like climate change—an area where NASA plays a crucial research role. This first round of cuts is just the beginning of what’s likely to be an exceptionally painful era in NASA history.
This is a good thing.
23 people losing their jobs out of 18,000 people at NASA? The horrors!! That is 0.13%.
I don’t really know what NASA has been up to lately. Their last two accomplishments that I know about are 1) stranding two people in space and 2) promoting Muslim interests under Obama.
NASA has dismantled itself, Trump is now just cleaning up.
Absorbed into the USSF! Why have both.
Has NASA carried its weight in the last ten years?
Good 👍 one
They have a few programs that are taking way too long and with way too much spent to get them off the ground. That is evidenced how Space X has leap frogged over them in development and program management
What? No more Muslim outreach? No possibility of space Muslims? I am depressed.
Oh HELL YES! no more muslim outreach. No more chinese superiority, especially with substandard chinese images posted as the Astronomy Picture of the Day!
“Trump’s Dismantling of NASA “
This constant hyperbole and lying by all these rat shills is getting old.
If I understand it correctly, it’s probably not accurate to think of SpaceX as replacing NASA. It’s more like SpaceX is replacing Boeing by being the one getting most of NASA’s contracts.
“...the current administration doesn’t care for inconvenient truths like climate change—an area where NASA plays a crucial research role.”
Poor dumb us. And we thought NASA was all about space research and exploration.
A headline I found on the internet: NASA’s new mission: Building ties to Muslim world (Obama’s administration)
For those of us that remember .... FU, Bath House, and the ValJar you rode in on.
https://nypost.com/2010/07/06/nasa-chief-says-obama-hired-him-to-reach-out-to-muslim-nations/
President Obama gave a speech in Cairo at the beginning of his presidency that was supposed redefine America’s relations with the Muslim world. The results of that effort haven’t been looking so good.
But in the meantime, the White House isn’t alone in working toward the lofty goal of “let’s make them like us better.” The head of NASA, Charles Bolden says that when he got his job, Obama asked him to make it a “foremost” task to “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering,” Bolden told al Jazeera in an interview.
The same message about improving relations with Muslims and highlighting Muslim contributions to the world is also a big part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ current mandate. As NEA Chief Rocco Landesman has made clear, reaching out to Muslims and the Muslim world is now a major concern for the arts agency he’s running.
Clearly, wherever and whenever possible the Obama administration wants to make nice with the Islamic world. The problem with this goal is that it is being applied in the most unlikely places, such as at NASA and it is happening at the same time as other efforts to change the vocabulary about terror and Islamic radicalism to better suit this agenda.
So while the Homeland Security agency keeps changing the terms they want to use to describe terror attacks, murder and destruction in the name of Islam, other government agencies are working over time to stress how wonderful Muslims are. A reality check would seem highly necessary and even more unlikely.
Does NASA still plan to send people to Mars, or did that end when Sheila Jackson Lee died? She is no longer available to go check on the flag left there by the previous astronauts.
Start at NASA Ames in Mountain View, CA.
Back in the early 90’s we heard that all they do is do busy work so the Phd’s can keep their jobs.
I had a friend that got hired there and after 6 months she left. She was shocked at how little they did while everyone in Silicon Valley was working themselves into a early grave.
First thing to go: Muslim outreach
Isn’t NASA more about engineering than “the science”?
Anything that references the science or democracy should be dismantled.
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