Keith’s note: according to the NASA OIG report Evaluation of NASA’s Information Security Program under the Federal Information Security Modernization Act for Fiscal Year 2025: “The Federal Information Security Modernization Act requires the Office of Inspector General to conduct an annual evaluation of NASA’s information security program. For fiscal year 2025, we rated NASA’s information security program at a Level 3 – meaning policies, procedures, and strategies were consistently implemented, but quantitative and qualitative effectiveness measures were lacking – a rating that falls short to be considered effective.”

Keith’s note: Hooray! There is a new AI.gov website. And it has an Action Plan page – and a 28 page “Winning the Race AMERICA’S AI ACTION PLAN” PDF. NSF, NIST and other agencies are mentioned. But other than a throw-away line “Just like we won the space race” on the first page there is no mention of NASA, space exploration, etc. Oh well.

Keith’s note: NASA just issued a standard paperwork thing in the Federal Register today. It is a note about some questionnaire they want people to fill out egarding special NASA events that they went to. Sounds innocent enough and it is good that NASA would want feedback. Except NASA states that they are only worried about less than 0.01% of the American public and that they are going to spend more than one government employee’s annual hours looking at an expected 650 responses? What about looking into what the rest of the nation thinks about how ‘Great’ NASA is or should be? (more below)

OCIO Team, I wanted to provide an update on our current situation and related planning efforts as we navigate significant organizational changes, first starting with my plans. As many of you may have heard, after 35 years at NASA, I have decided to bring my career to a close – but this is not happening immediately. I’ll be here through the end of the calendar year to support the many challenges we are working and enable an effective transition while continuing to partner with you in doing great things for NASA. Now about some of those challenges…

Keith’s note: According to this AP story: “Earlier this month, the official government websites that hosted the authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments went dark. Such sites tell state and local governments and the public what to expect in their backyards from a warming world and how best to adapt to it. At the time, the White House said NASA would house the reports to comply with a 1990 law that requires the reports, which the space agency said it planned to do. But on Monday, NASA announced that it aborted those plans.”

Keith’s note: when I was working at NASA on the Space Station program back in the day one things we’d tell students and the general public was that the space station would be one of the brightest things in the night sky and that it will fly over their house. I have gone outside more times than I can remember just to see it fly over. Ask my neighbors. I always explain to them how to find the flyover times online. When I was in Nepal at Everest in 2009 I went to the Spot the Station website to get ISS flyover times and showed the flyover to a bunch of Sherpa guides who had no idea that this was a thing you could do or that a person who lived up there was in Nepal with me. Now, in a memo sent out on 14 May 2025, NASA is taking the ISS tracking website offline and relying only on cell phone apps. The memo sent out to Spot the Station website uses says “the ability to find sighting opportunities near you will also no longer be available on the website.” At a time when everyone struggles to explain the value and impact of space exploration, shutting off a website like this is counterproductive in the extreme. Apps are great – but why delete a trusted source that has been of global utility for decades – especially one with text messages that have great utility for people with limited Internet access? Full Memo below.

Keith’s note: I just got this from USRA/LPI: “Dear Colleagues, We have heard from many of you and understand that there is significant concern among the planetary science community regarding the removal of DEI content from USRA/LPI websites. Please know that we did not make that decision lightly. We were doing our best to comply with our understanding of the Administration’s directives (specifically, Executive Order 14173) and the deadline it set for compliance.”

Keith’s note: The NASA DEI Erasure Squad has been busy. If you search for past LPSC abstracts on DEI, DEIA, diversity etc. you’ll see that they have disappeared and prior meeting agendas have been altered. Try this one from 2022: “Insight’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group“. Its gone. But the Internet Archive has it here. While I have your attention how about this one over at NTRS “Diversity and Inclusion in Spacecraft Science Teams: What Do We Know and What Can We Do About It?” from NASA GSFC that was presented LPSC 2023. Or “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Initiatives on the Mars 2020 Science Team and Implications for NASA Planetary Science Missions“ presented at LPSC 2024. These and many other diversity and inclusion themed abstracts are all still online at a NASA server. And there’s man more abstracts and papers online all over the agency. And they are being archived offline. And they are in the abstract volumes originally created and distributed in printed and PDF formats to tens of thousands of participants. The DOGE Diversity Narcs are not very good at their job. You cannot make this whole topic go away. It just grows back and spreads when you try to do so. Just sayin’

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: 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: According to 404 (free subscription required) “Here is NASA’s Contract with Clearview AI“ – “Clearview AI is an OSINT [open source intelligence] platform used to aid in the identification and investigations of persons of interest, by allowing users to search its database of 50+ billion facial images sourced from public-only web sources, including news media, mugshot websites, public social media, & many other open sources,” one part of the documents reads.” … “Previously, NASA told 404 Media that that license was purchased on behalf of the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).” According to Futurism “Clearview’s value proposition is basically to scrape billions of photos from Facebook, Google, and Twitter – without anybody’s consent – and then charge cops to use all that private data to help identify “suspects.” Why does any part of NASA need this technology? Security? Or something new? Who are they watching and how could they use this new software to match this information up with other sources – such as (private) public social media accounts? NASA is not talking about this. Ask your manager. See if they know. Doubtful.

Keith’s update: Now the page is approved and online again. WTF Meta? Keith’s earlier note: Here we go again. Meta has suspended the Facebook NASAWatch page – again for “community standards violations” . They took it down a week ago, denied my repeated protests, then suddenly restored it. It has been online for ~20 years. This is what you have to put up with if you try and get news to NASA people affected by layoffs, DOGE etc. See As DOGE focuses on NASA, Facebook suspends NASAWatch. ‘A curious coincidence’? from the Houston Chronicle on 21 Feb 2025 about the earlier suspension. Oh yes – on the shutdown notice it says “Good news: no violations to show”. So – there are no violations, so why was it taken down for “violations“?

Keith’s note: some sage advice from a reader: “I’ve been telling everyone at NASA and elsewhere, download all your personnel records, SF-50s; get all your appraisals and download those; go to any other places like employee express (for NASA and some other agencies) and make sure you download all your Leave and Earnings statements. Also, offload and save any emails that have to do with good performance and anything that you can use later. Once you’re out, you won’t have access to any of these things.” Update from GRC: a Directorate level supervisor said the OCIO said “eOPF downloads are being monitored – do not to save it to your agency computer.” Employees were told instead to print it out and were told that NASA will be doing searches on computers.

Keith’s note: the AI mapping of NASA management and employee structure has started at DOGE. This basic structure is online at DOGE now. Just follow the management tree and you will see that they are mapping out down to the sub-directorate level. They are already mapping employee age, time employed, and salaries. Knowing the tools that they have access to, their raw computer power, and unfettered access, I am certain that by the time they are done they will know quite a lot. And they will not necessarily want to openly share that data – or tell employees what individual information they have. Given the lack of obvious guard rails, this information may well involve various things that the government is not supposed to track – personally identifiable info like social media postings, and conceivably virtually anything you can already get through a basic commercially accessible ID check. And there will be errors that will only be caught after something illegal or inappropriate has been done with that info.

• Oh yes – this website is already creating stir: according to HuffPost: “The website states in tiny print at the bottom that its database excludes information from U.S. intelligence agencies. But an easy search shows that DOGE’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites. Not only are NRO’s budgets and head counts classified, but the prospect of Musk’s tech team meddling in sensitive personnel information is setting off alarms for some in the intelligence community.”

Keith’s note: NASA PAO just provided this statement with regard to my post You Must Hide Your Pride At NASA (they waited 4 days to respond) which was cited in a press release from House Science Committee Democrats. To be clear: I stand by every single word in my post. Its real folks.

• NASA: “There are no new bans on any personal affects in employees’ workspaces. As always, the items must adhere to legal, safety, and NASA rules and guidelines. Some managers have been reminding employees to be mindful of what personal affects they have in their workspaces, but there are no penalties or warnings about being placed on administrative leave for displaying personal items.”

Keith’s note: D.O.G.E. people are expected to be at NASA this week looking through the things that they want to look through. Make sure to hide the alien tech before they get there.

Keith’s note: According to the Washington Post: “The DOGE team plans to replicate this process across many departments and agencies, accessing the back-end software at different parts of the government and then using AI technology to extract and sift through information about spending on employees and programs, including diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, according to another person familiar with the DOGE process, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe it. – The Technology Transformation Services section of the General Services Administration, a group established during the Obama administration to make government platforms more accessible and intuitive, has become a key tool of the DOGE.”

Keith’s update: A month ago, on 2 May 2024, NASA Ames posted “Researchers Develop ‘Founding Document’ on Synthetic Cell Development“ which says “In a paper published recently in ACS Synthetic Biology, researchers outline the potential opportunities that synthetic cell development could unlock and what challenges lie ahead in this groundbreaking research. They also present a roadmap to inspire and guide innovation in this intriguing field.” When it was originally published at NASA.gov it had a link to “Building Synthetic Cells─From the Technology Infrastructure to Cellular Entities” (ACS Synth. Biol. 2024, 13, 4, 974–997 Publication Date: March 26, 2024) which, it would seem, was the ‘Founding Document’ that NASA wanted everyone to know about. Cool stuff. Thanks for the heads up NASA. But wait: the article that NASA points to is behind a pay wall. It is rather odd for NASA PAO to overtly promote this article as a ‘Founding Document’ – one that is apparently important (to NASA) – but then lets this important thing sit behind a paywall offsite. So I sent an email to NASA a month ago. They said they’d fix it. They then fixed it. Now the link is simply gone from the NASA.gov article and no hint is offered as to where it is or how to read it. A month later and there is still no link to the article or link to the text that is this ‘Founding Document’ By now NASA should be aware of various OSTP/OMB policies with regard to making taxpayer-funded research available. NASA has gotten better at this but apparently not everyone got that memo. So, will you please post the ‘Founding Document’ NASA – or make it openly available at its source?