Keith’s note: According to this press release “Committee Leaders Demand Answers from NASA on DOGE Access After the Agency Refuses to Comply with Investigation“ specific instances of DOGE employees (who are named) with unparalleled access to NASA sensitive information have been identified. NASA has not been forth coming in their responses to earlier Congressional inquires in this regard. Now Congress wants answers, saying “The information we have reviewed of NASA’s vulnerability to DOGE-related threats is chilling.” Full release and letter below:

Keith’s note: according to NASA: “Jared Isaacman is set to participate in a hearing to become the next NASA administrator at 10 am EDT on Wednesday, April 9, before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The agency will stream the hearing on NASA+, and the committee will stream it on its website and YouTube channel. Learn how to watch NASA content on a variety of agency platforms, including social media.”

Keith’s note: According to House Democrats probe Elon Musk’s conflicts of interest with NASA, Axios: “Rep Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) and Rep. Gery Connolly (D-Va.) sent a letter to Iris Lan, NASA’s chief legal officer, requesting information and documents by April 21. They asked how NASA is ensuring that Musk isn’t exploiting the agency to enrich himself and his companies, which they said would violate ethics rules for his position as a special government employee. … “Mr. Isaacson’s fortune is tied to Shift4, the payments processing company he controls. In 2021, Shift4 entered into a partnership with Starlink, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mr. Musk’s SpaceX. Shift4 estimated that its partnership with SpaceX will generate $100 billion in Starlink subscription payments.” Full letter text below.

Keith’s note: The whole internal Administration tariff spat touches NASA rather directly. First there is “Musk lashes out at architect of Trump’s tariffs in first public comments about shock policy – then there’s “Musk “doesn’t understand” trade cheating, Navarro says“. Peter Navarro’s frequent co-author Greg Autry has been nominated to become the next NASA CFO and (former) SpaceX guy Michael Altenhofen is a senior advisor to NASA where two time SpaceX customer Jared Isaacman will soon work. Hopefully NASA can put up a firewall against this internecine bickering. Ad Astra y’all

Keith’s note: For all of you Space Symposium fans who think we’re on the verge of a commerce golden age in space or that U.S. will #MakeSpaceGreatAgain and devote big bucks to space science, Moon, Mars, new space stations, Space Force etc. Just look at what the tariff thing did in mere days to our economy. Do the math. Where is the money going to come from? Discuss this among yourselves.

Keith’s note: If they can delete climate and Earth Science data at NOAA they can do the same thing to science data at NASA. According to this release from House Science Democrats: Ranking Members Condemn Trump Administration Plan to Shut Down NOAA Research Websites and Their Data: “Last night, reporting revealed that the Trump administration plans to shut down websites associated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) research division. President Trump and Commerce Secretary Lutnick plan to cancel the contracts of webservers that support these websites. If the websites are eliminated, the climate and weather data hosted on these sites would also be lost.” Update: NOAA research websites slated to go dark get a reprieve

Keith’s note: Amidst the ever present fear of being fired (without any real details), having budgets cut and missions cancelled, Janet Petro wants your ideas on how to improve NASA. And you only have one week to submit them. And just like the “Five Things What I Did Last Week” thing, memo there are 5 questions. FYI when I go to https://forms.office.com/g/opuPtHnrRg I get a 404 – that may be because I am outside the firewall. But based on input from inside NASA the link does work. Embrace the challenge y’all. Janet’s memo – and the questionnaire form located online inside the firewall below:

Keith’s note: according to “Senate Commerce Announces Hearing for NASA, FCC Nominees“: “U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a nominations hearing for Jared Isaacman, nominee to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration … at 10:00 AM EST on Wednesday, April 9, 2025.”

Keith’s note: According to this 2021 ENR article, Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro was firmly in the diversity-is-good camp back in the day. KSC Director Janet Petro Reflects on Diversity: “Petro: KSC has embraced the link between diverse teams and innovation. We reinforce this message with our entire workforce by including it as one of our DEIA Crucial Topics: “NASA sees DEIA as a mission imperative. Our commonalities unite us as a team, and the universe of our differences gives us the perspectives and insights that mitigate group think and confirmation bias.”

Keith’s note: There is no mention in these news stories about NASA offering a new round of buyouts or whether they are considering them. You might ask your management – to ask their management etc. etc.

• New Buyout Offers on the Table for Federal Employees, Fedsmith: “Some agencies have made new buyout offers to their employees to voluntarily reduce the size of their workforces before widespread RIFs begin.”
• Federal Workers Get Second Musk Buyout Offer , Yahoo: “Federal workers at a number of agencies — including the Defense, Transportation, Agriculture and Energy departments — are getting a second chance to accept a buyout offer, the latest effort to downsize the US government spearheaded by Elon Musk.”
• Federal agencies launch second — and likely final — offer to leave, Politico: “This week, at least seven agencies, including the departments of Defense, Agriculture, Energy, Housing and Urban Development and Transportation, as well as the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration, are making a new round of offers for workers to leave their jobs, using the same Deferred Resignation Program that prompted more than 77,000 federal employees to voluntarily leave earlier this year.”

Keith’s note: This hearing starts Tuesday morning at 10:00 am EDT House Space & Aeronautics Subcommittee Hearing – Leveraging Commercial Innovation for Lunar Exploration: A Review of NASA’s CLPS Initiative and will be webcast live.

Keith’s note: Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro just gave a plenary overview of NASA science at NAS Space Science Week [audio] This was a clear snapshot of what NASA science is, how the agency leads the world in this endeavor, its importance as an economic multiplier, and its value as an enabling tool for all forms of exploration. Of course, no details were offered on budgets, personnel, etc. Petro said “While I cannot speculate on decisions that have not been made yet, I can tell you this: NASA’s commitment to scientific excellence has never waivered and it will not waiver now.” “NASA is and will continue to be the global leader in space exploration and scientific discovery”. Of course, this is all moot if the White House/OSTP/OMB/OPM/DOGE says “Yea, yea, yea. So what. You’re still cut.”

Keith’s note: In opening Space Science Week at the National Academy, Rep. Mike Haridopolos (FL-08) just said that President Trump “has spared NASA from the large budget and personnel cuts” due to the importance of Artemis and “The only people who left are those who took the buyout.” People at NASA have already been fired and looming budget cuts will gut NASA science. Someone needs to brief the Congressman about the facts on the ground. Just sayin’.

Keith’s Note: on this date 1 April 1996, NASA (RIF) Watch was born with this posting. No kidding. “Editor’s note: From a well-placed source at NASA HQ who participated in this meeting: Mal Peterson (NASA HQ Comptroller’s Office) personally briefed NASA program managers (Centers and HQ) yesterday (27 March) and gave instructions for planning and implementing a RIF by Summer 1997, the reduction to be completed by October 1998, to a total complement level of 17,500, as called for by the President for the year 2000, to be completed by 1998. … Vugraphs were shown concerning “the value of fear in managing corporate-downsizing.” (That is a direct quote) They have statistics on the number of personnel supposed to be within retirement range and everyone will be encouraged to retire asap, though these numbers will not prevent a RIF.”

Keith’s note: The Fram2 crew and their SpaceX ship “Resilience” are in orbit after a flawless ride uphill. I did launch commentary on Bloomberg Radio [audio] and was also on Deutsche Welle TV [audio].

Keith’s note: Space Science Week 2025 – March 31-April 4, 2025 “is the joint meeting of the Space Studies Board of the U.S. National Academies discipline committees in collaboration with the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Board on Physics and Astronomy.” The 1 April plenary webcast is open to anyone. According to the agenda Janet Petro is speaking at 9:20 am EDT.

Keith’s note: as you may recall “SERVIR is was a joint development initiative of NASA and USAID, SERVIR works worked in partnership with leading regional organizations worldwide to help developing countries use information provided by Earth-observing satellites and geospatial technologies for managing climate risks and land use.” It is gone now – so NASA issued this notice: “ROSES-24 Amendment 118: SERVIR Applied Sciences Team Not Solicited” which says:

Keith’s note: I now have an up-to-date NASAWatch account on Bluesky at @nasawatch.bsky.com in addition to @nasawatch on Twitter.

Keith’s note: In January I noted that NASA had taken the NASA Online Directives Information System (NODIS) offline – so I posted an archive version of what was there before they fiddled with it (see: Someone Is Trying to Erase NASA’s Directives. Oops. We Have Them All). NODIS is now back online – but with lots of changes in according to White House Executive Orders. Well, the DOGE folks aren’t the only ones who know how to code. A NASAWatch reader has done an exhaustive look into what was changed – added, deleted etc. In NODIS “Noticing Changes in NASA NODIS Comparison of NASA Policy Documents Across Two Time Points 2025-01-20 to 2025-03-07“ notes:

• “At the start of the second Trump administration in 2025, NODIS went offline entirely many days , which was unusual. I was curious what changes might have occurred across that gap, but didn’t want to read and try to manually compare 260+ PDfs. No one does. Instead, I wrote some python code to collect and analyze the PDFs available at two different points in time. I figured it would be a good excuse to learn about the Internet Archive and build some skills around programmatic accessing of websites and identifying changes in PDFs.”
• “13 policy directives were deleted entirely with many having a focus on preventing or responding to discrimination. Two of those deleted were replaced by directives with a different name in what is basically a version bump.“

Keith’s note: OPM has posted an immense amount of new RIF Information. The have issued a 119 page Workforce Reshaping Operations Handbook. A one page overview outlines the information and how a RIF will be constructed “When an agency must abolish positions due to reorganization, shortage of funds, or lack of work, the RIF regulations establish procedures for determining how employees are released and whether an employee has retention rights to a different position. The regulatory requirements governing RIF, which Federal agencies must adhere to, are contained in Title 5, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 351. RIF Procedures There are six phases to implementing a RIF. The actual timing of the process may vary based on agency-specific requirements, collective bargaining agreements, and workforce considerations. Specific operational procedures are found in the Workforce Reshaping Operations Handbook | OPM.”