NASA may let go of at least 2,145 senior-level employees in a push to slash federal government employees, US media reports have claimed. Shockingly, the Trump administration is targeting experts with decades of experience in the space agency, which may hurt its work and research in the long run.
Early retirement and buyouts are being offered to 2,145 high-ranking NASA employees who have been handling management-level responsibilities that require specialist skills, reports said.
The documents indicate that 1,818 of the staff included in the redundancy list are presently part of NASA’s core mission areas, including human space flight, The Guardian said in a report. The rest of the staff are attached to mission support roles, including information technology or finance, it added.
It was Politico that broke the news of the NASA redundancies, citing an official document it claimed to have obtained. It claimed the move was part of “broader administration efforts to trim the federal workforce.” A proposed White House budget for 2026 wants to trim down NASA’s funding by 25 per cent and cut over 5,000 staff. If enacted, it would be the lowest NASA budget ever since the 1960s, the report underlined.
People working across NASA’s 10 regional centres have found a place on the list, with the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland set to lose the most staff – 607. Politico claimed that the Johnson Space Center in Texas will lose 366 staff, while the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will lose 311. The NASA headquarters in Washington will let go of 307 people, while the Langley Research Center in Virginia will lose 281. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland will reduce their workforce by 279 and 191 workers respectively.
NASA employees layoffs: How many federal government workers will lose jobs across 10 regional centres?
