NASA confirmed Thursday that the space agency may have sidestepped the sweeping layoffs it was expected to implement this week, potentially saving hundreds of newly hired employees and career professionals.
In a statement, the agency said it worked with the Office of Personnel Management — which has been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the federal workforce — on “a careful evaluation of our workforce and mission requirements.”
Those discussions led to a determination that job cuts for probationary employees, typically those hired within the past year, will be “performance-based or voluntary in accordance with agency policy.”
That move stands in contrast to orders at some other federal agencies in which probationary employees were ordered to be cut across the board.
“The agency will continue to monitor all employee performances and take swift action as appropriate with any issues, ensuring American citizens have an excellent and efficient workforce at NASA,” the space agency’s statement reads.
However, roughly 5% of NASA’s workforce accepted offers under the deferred resignation program — which was a move by the Trump administration to lure federal employees to step down from their roles in exchange for being paid through September, the space agency said. That figure includes a “small subset” of probationary employees, NASA said.
NASA employs nearly 18,000 people, according to the space agency, so roughly 900 workers may have taken that offer.
One NASA employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive topics, expressed concern about how patents and intellectual property may be affected if NASA workers leave their job but are still on the agency’s payroll for the months ahead. It’s not clear how intellectual property issues might play out legally in that regard, the source said.
Concerns in space community
According to two sources familiar with the matter, there were about 1,300 probationary workers at NASA.
The prospect of all probationary employees losing their jobs set off alarm bells in the space community.
The head of space policy at the nonprofit Planetary Society, which is led by Bill Nye and advocates for space exploration, said in a statement that the “indiscriminate dismissal of upwards of 1,000 scientists, engineers, and explorers at NASA” would mark “the largest involuntary workforce reduction since the end of the Apollo program.”
Those Apollo-era layoffs at NASA occurred “when we were winding down a moon program,” Planetary Society chief of space policy Casey Dreier told CNN. “But we’re actively spinning one up right now.”
Dreier was referring to the Artemis program, which seeks to return astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as mid-2027, according to the most recent timeline NASA mapped out.
According to Dreier’s research, NASA employed more than 35,000 people as the Apollo program reached its peak in the late 1960s.
Unlike the Apollo program, however, NASA intends to outsource much of the work on its Artemis program to the private sector through fixed-price contracts.
Dreier said that the Planetary Society is not advocating for NASA’s head count to grow — or even suggesting workforce reductions won’t help the agency become more nimble.
The problem, however, is “the blunt, non-strategic, indiscriminate nature (of the firings) that we’re fundamentally worried about,” he said. “That will hinder NASA’s ability to move forward on its plans.”
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