Keith’s note to NASA employees and contractor partners: If there is no FY 2026 budget by 30 Sep, a CR will be in place until there is. Yet major decisions are already being implemented per the devastating President’s FY 2026 Budget Request (PBR). So ignore official statements from NASA to the contrary. Even if a budget is approved, the actions taken by NASA may be hard or impossible to reverse. NASA HQ simply does not care what Congress thinks. Senior management across NASA has been told to “implement the PBR to the letter” on October 1. Nothing is in writing. It’s all verbal. Odds are that most of your management – nearly all the way up – are being officially kept in the dark and simply told to comply. FYI NASA HQ 9th floor: this is not a secret – everyone, everywhere in the broader space community knows what is going on. So pardon me if I seem to be a tad strident today. I have been watching NASA do its thing since I was a 6 year old in 1961. And I used to work there. I am heart broken – and angry – at the impending destruction of this unrivaled, amazing resource and the horrid treatment of the outstanding, inspired people who have made it what it is.
Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member... More by Keith Cowing
Thank you as always, Keith. What I have had trouble understanding is why we have been discouraged from sharing the truth of the situation. These are facts, we are being ordered to follow the PBR and proceed with the irreversible elimination of a significant fraction of NASA’s space fleet. Even people who work at NASA are having difficulty understanding what is happening.
As engineers and scientists and good humans we thrive on transparency and truth. The majority of the NASA workforce (contractors and CS) is this way. A significant amount of management has some truth lobotomy when they get their roles, so truth becomes the enemy of back door plans. The dark side of NASA has always existed but not a lot get to experience it (the least fun part about NASA). Now the entire workforce is getting to experience it collectively. No one deserves it but expect to be grossed out by the actions of most managers at this point who are just following orders.
Most employees with integrity are having internal crisis now because reality is conflicting with the standards they are supposed to withhold. Sorry but let it crash and save your mental health. NASA employees need to think of themselves first now and remove their job from their identity. Repeat after me…NASA does not love me back.
So when does Michiud get the word to shutdown the SLS line? Isn’t art 3 hardware well on its way so no need first the first steps on the line.
When is halo, ihab and the other parts of gateway getting their contract terminated money?
When is the RFI for commercial services to transport crew from earth to moon and back going to be released. If it needs to take over post Artemis 3 they need to start moving on that contract. And will it be one or two commercial providers to provide redundant systems and maybe more frequent trips to the moon than the once per year SLS and Orion could do.
Oct 1 is just 6 weeks away seems like WARN, and other contract termination notices need to be sent out and replacement mechanisms started to stand up.
Gateway and Artemis III are essentially safe (but not strictly guaranteed …) from all this nonsense thanks to the OBBB’s specific identification of this programs to continue.
You think the president and his ilk care what Cruz passed in the bill. Duffy could gut gateway tomorrow. Rif the team and candle the contracts leaving nothing for congress to save .
Thank You Keith. You’re telling the truth. They’re going to force the big cuts to NASA with no paper trail working in secret. So the American people don’t know about it. Where are the space reporters to cover the story, why are HQ leaders hiding what they’re really doing? They are moving to implement the PBR now to have cuts in place Oct 1 and begin shutting down missions. Please put more and more sunlight on this and keep speaking up. They are not doing it in the open for a reason! Congress has to act.
Like Keith I am about his age; I too grew up with the program starting in 61; unlike Keith I was never riffed and I’ve been with NASA more than 45 years now. The program needs some serious realignment. Its needed it for 35 to 40 years. Instead its grown worse this whole time. Mainly I am referring to human spaceflight. The way in which DOGE, then modified by some Texas Senators, went about it, they seem to have preserved human spaceflight with all of its inadequacies, at the expense of science missions. NASA should have put a realignment in place decades ago. It never did. The realignment now being forced is moon unfortunate but I can’t say we didn’t see it coming.
You are correct. At GSFC upper management is no longer holding town halls and all communications are coming down to the workforce through the line manager, who are mostly in the dark. The PBR is being implemented, and critical functionalities are being eliminated. For example, ESDIS (Earth Science Data and Information System), is getting deleted, which will eliminate the capability of the agency to manage Earth Observing Satellites.
It appears that NASA is just a small piece in the Administrations war on science. The tragedy is that much greater.
This, anti-science, and other mischief reminds me what Neil deGrasse Tyson said. Centuries ago when science flourish in Islamic countries but one man said they should be more spiritual and many of these countries have taken a back seat in global development. 2025 will be noted the year when the US decided to step down eventually becoming a fallen country.
Thank you for (once again) pointing out the schism that continues to take place between what’s being announced (“There’s nothing to see here folks, just business as usual”) and what’s actually taking place. Although I’m a (recently) retired contractor, I’ve been watching for months, with increasing alarm, the NASA train as it roars increasingly nearer the edge of the abyss. And now it looks like it will hurtle over it 1 September. And Congress can’t save it. Trump will just continue to run right over them and their constitutionally protected rights, with the courts unwilling to stop him. It’s a travesty (one of many when it comes to the sciences in general), and it will take years to remedy (and that’s if we’re lucky).
I worked at NASA until recently. The culture is to put nothing in writing to avoid accountability for workplace related issues. When they plan to do something sneaky, management would only use verbal orders and refuse to acknowledge a meeting recap over email. This was how some managers lie to get people terminated and have no accountability. It was always super obvious to the onlookers, almost comical that management thought they were being covert. There was just nothing we could do but press on because speaking up meant we became targets. I was a speaker upper so obviously not a cultural fit there in the long run.
So not surprised that they are complying with whatever they think will save them and destroying from within without a paper trail. They are fools if they think their deals to show loyalty will save them as they simultaneously lose so much. Actions speak louder than words and right now all actions are in direct conflict with the amazing workforce.
Agree. The Organizational Silence was deafening at times.
You are so right. But I keep telling myself that this is what America voted for. At least a little over half. And many of these people, are people we actually work with. I wonder how they feel, and do they feel some sort of regret for what’s happening. Sadly, I think many of them don’t.
The real question is: will there be enough of us around to save what is left when the great nightmare is over?
I can see Space Force taking over KSC. Trumps original work incomplete, add the golden dome and for national defense they will take over launches and NASA would be a removable logo with velcro on the back that can be stuck on a door to handle commercial launch liaison works.
In years gone by NASA ignored atmospheric pure oxygen, soot blow-by and foam detachment to keep the manned space program going at full speed ahead, just as they are ignoring sub-standard heat shields and escalating air leaks today. The real crisis isn’t budgetary, it’s the same myopic management decisions that bely the “Safery First!” mantra. There’s plenty of funding for the robotic fleet if the correct tough decisions were made regarding the manned fleet. You can’t suspend reality forever – a true reconning will come yet again to NASA. Let’s hope NASA isn’t thrown away after THAT.
What it started out to be about was budget cutback. The US cannot keep spending at the rate it has. While there is a lot of good that comes out of the space program (1) mostly it is not critical to the nation’s future (2) few of the public really understand how it affects anything. Back when Nixon decided they would keep civilian space program spending under 1% that number was randomly chosen just because they felt the public would go along with such a low number; no one really knew what benefit would come from the space program. 55 years later there have not been the dramatic advances or discoveries; no one ha cured cancer. What has come out of it is poorly ‘advertised’ by NASA. With the recent web reset its hard to even trace4 the history of the different programs and advances. While it started as a big funding cut, when Congress got involved it became partisan with support for some things like spending in Texas and Gateway, when technically that probably should have been the first program to go as it is unneeded. Yes, we’d like to go back to the Moon mainly to beat the Chinese to any locations with water, but what is critical is the Space X Starship; almost nothing NASA is doing is critical. They could have easily cut not only Gateway but Orion and SLS too and it would not have had much affect on the timetable for lunar return. Now all those programs will stay and they will kill some of the other science efforts.
If it was really about balancing the budget, why did they ram through the OBBBA to INCREASE the deficit with even more tax cuts for rich people & corporations? Why is NASA wasting tens to hundreds of millions just to move the Shuttle from the Smithsonian to Texas?
Hemming and hawing about “fiscal responsibility” is nothing more than a fig leaf. The real goal is destroying anything they don’t like, and they will blow up up the deficit to do it, all while claiming that actually this is saving money, somehow.
To people like him if you can’t commodify it, slap a price on it, and sell it it’s not worth doing. It’s incredible to work for NASA for 45 years, as they claim, seemingly lacking any deeper interest in the universe around them (or even more importantly the planet on which we live). His attitude is like he views NASA as another widget factory cranking out widgets. It’s exhausting to read, frankly. He got his pension, why should he care, I guess?
But DOD will have a trillion dollar budget.
Who are we fighting? The Romulans?
Hopefully, someone will remind them about, and perhaps even enforce, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958.
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https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5453230-duffy-nasa-climate-science/
Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said Thursday that climate and earth science at the agency will “move aside” as it refocuses solely on space exploration.
“All the climate science and all of the other priorities that the last administration had at NASA we’re going to move aside, and all of the science that we do is going to be directed towards exploration, which is the mission of NASA,” Duffy, who also leads the Transportation Department, told Fox Business.
“That’s why we have NASA — is to explore, not to do all of these earth sciences,” he added.
OMB just had to put their public database of spending back online. But guess what, all the data for NASA under this administration looks like its not there, which is not following court order. When does it get restored… or do they need to hide something?
https://apportionment-public.max.gov/