NASA personnel warn of ‘dire’ consequences of proposed cuts

More than 280 current and former NASA employees have warned that “rapid and wasteful changes” dictated by the White House will have “dire” consequences for the space agency.

On Monday, the 56th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, personnel from every NASA center and mission directorate addressed a letter to the agency’s interim administrator, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. The letter represents the employees’ formal dissent to policies that they say “threaten to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission.”

Signatures were collected by Stand Up for Science, a nonprofit created in February to oppose cuts to federal science agencies. In addition to NASA personnel, signers include prominent scientists, activists, politicians, and Nobel laureates.

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In a statement to FLYING, NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens appeared to dismiss the group’s credibility, saying Stand Up For Science “advances radical, discriminatory [diversity, equity, and inclusion] principles.” Stevens said the administration has “proposed billions of dollars for NASA science” despite a massive cut to science programs in the White House’s fiscal year 2026 budget request. The proposal has received widespread industry pushback.

More than half of the letter’s signatories chose to remain anonymous “due to the culture of fear of retaliation cultivated by this administration,” they wrote. Despite raising concerns, they said, employees are being “pressured to implement harmful measures.”

“Major programmatic shifts at NASA must be implemented strategically so that risks are managed carefully,” the letter reads. “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety, scientific advancement, and efficient use of public resources. These cuts are arbitrary and have been enacted in defiance of congressional appropriations law.”

Signatories who spoke to CNN and The New York Times — some on condition of anonymity — painted a picture of an agency where safety and expertise are being eroded, and employees are scared into silence. Many of them — at least 3,000, or 1 in 6 of the agency’s nearly 18,000 civil servants, per CNN — are preparing to depart due to a combination of facility closures and workforce trimming incentives, such as deferred resignation offers.

Their dissent follows similar stands from employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). More than 100 signatories to the latter were placed on administrative leave.

“We’re scared of retaliation. We huddle in the bathroom,” Monica Gorman, an analyst at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told 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 we talk.”

On Monday afternoon, NASA announced the resignation of Makenzie Lystrup, the director of Goddard since April 2023.

‘Seven dissents’ to NASA leadership

Employees directed their dissent to Duffy, whom President Donald Trump named interim NASA administrator earlier this month. Duffy took the reins from acting administrator Janet Petro and will fill the leadership void until Trump selects an alternative to Jared Isaacman, whose nomination for a permanent role was reversed in June.

According to NASA procedural requirements for formal dissent, personnel have the “right to take the issue upward in the organization, even to the NASA Administrator, if necessary.”

The letter’s authors issued “seven dissents” against recent actions they contend will have “catastrophic impacts” — some of which are already being felt. For example, they urged Duffy to reject changes to NASA’s Technical Authority that they said are “driven by anything other than safety and mission assurance.”

Created in 2003 in the wake of the space shuttle Columbia disaster, the Technical Authority is part of the agency’s system of safety checks and balances. The authors pointed to a town hall in June, during which agency leaders revealed plans to make the unit more “efficient.” A “culture of organizational silence” created over the past six months, they said, “represents a dangerous turn away from the lessons learned following the Columbia disaster.”

The letter also took aim at the White House budget request, which proposes cutting NASA’s top-line funding by almost 25 percent and shrinking its workforce by nearly one-third. Both would fall to their lowest levels since the Apollo era.

Human space exploration programs are slated for a modest boost at the expense of funding for science and other programs. The Science Mission Directorate (SMD), for example, faces a 47 percent cut — which all former living SMD heads have rejected.

“The United States hasn’t been back [to the moon] since 1972,” Stevens said. “That’s a shame and means we shouldn’t continue down the same path we’ve been on for decades. We must revisit what’s working and what’s not.”

Some projects on the chopping block, such as the Orion crew capsule, Space Launch System, and Mars Sample Return mission, have struggled to hit key milestones. But others, including the Lunar Gateway space station and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, are meeting cost and schedule expectations.

“To ensure NASA delivers for the American people, we are continually evaluating mission lifecycles, not on sustaining outdated or lower-priority missions,” Stevens said.

Many projects, such as the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Juno spacecraft, and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) probe, are active and fully funded by Congress. Downsizing or canceling them, employees said, “represents a permanent loss of capability to the United States both in space and on Earth.”

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They further argued that such programs support American national security and net a sizable economic return. They urged against canceling NASA participation in international missions with partners such as the European Space Agency (ESA).

“Basic research in space science, aeronautics, and the stewardship of the Earth are inherently governmental functions that cannot and will not be taken up by the private sector,” the authors wrote.

Earlier this month, online media outlet Ars Technica reported that NASA has directed certain program leaders to prepare “closeout” plans, which personnel said are an attempt to enforce the budget before it is approved by Congress. The move received bipartisan condemnation from lawmakers. Over the weekend, Senate appropriators voted to restore funding for several science missions in the crosshairs. The recent Republican-led reconciliation bill, meanwhile, allocates $10 billion to fund Orion, SLS, and Gateway.

Pushback from both sides of the aisle could save potentially thousands of public and private sector jobs as NASA contends with an agencywide exodus of personnel. Further reductions in force — which agency leaders have said may or may not happen — could impact more than 5,000 employees.

Stevens said any staff reductions will be “designed to protect safety-critical roles.” But dissenting personnel warned that departing employees will take with them valuable knowledge and experience.

The authors further called proposed cuts to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs and the Office of STEM Engagement a “critical blow” to the agency’s future workforce. Already, certain DEIA offices have been shuttered, and employees have been ordered to scrub webpages of terms such as “women in leadership” and “environmental justice.”

“Dismantling this American institution is a travesty,” said Colette Delawalla, founder and executive of Stand Up For Science. “No one voted for this. No one voted to willfully give our global dominance in science to other nations.”

The Trump administration has positioned human space exploration — particularly to Mars — as a priority. Stevens said the budget “will inspire the American people again” and help the U.S. “win the space race.” Mars exploration advocates, though, warn that proposed cuts to science may be antithetical to that goal.

“Cutting NASA’s overall Science budget by 50 percent…would result in mass layoffs of the same people we need to get us to Mars,” James Burk, executive director of The Mars Society, said in a social media post in May. “I join all my colleagues in opposing this draconian proposal.”