Wallops Shutdown Memo

Keith’s note: Employees at NASA Wallops Flight Facility under the Range Operations Contract II (ROC II) received the below email from contract management late Wednesday afternoon. Note: Charge codes, CUI information, emails etc. have been removed. Memo excerpt below.

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ROC-II Team:

So today finds us in a government shutdown.

You all should have received a “Goddard-All” email giving general directions. While the opening line of the message was not exactly written precisely (NASA and all field centers are not “Closed” in the traditional sense of the word; The center and Wallops is open for work), it does give notice that we are in Government funding lapse protocols.

Line 10 states “CENTER ACCESS: Beginning Thursday October 2, 2025, only excepted employees should access the center. All employees should confirm with your civil service or contract management whether your work is in an excepted status.”

We have received the official letter from our Government ROC-II COR and all our employees are exempted so we can continue to come to work, charge appropriately to our TOS, and get paid.

Below is the official list of “exempted work” that we are expected to come on site and work as needed:

The notice also states “ Other than these tasks, work under the contract cannot be performed during the lapse in appropriations unless funding is available, and Government oversight is not required”…We have confirmed that Poker set-up trip, BDA trips and Norway fall under this statement, so we can continue as planned on those tasks/missions

A cadre of the government team has also been exempted and will also continue to work on site to include the RMMO Chief, Ground Ops sup, and most of the PMs, so we will have some daily interaction to pass info and get oversight guidance

So I can say “Business as usual” but it would be very optimistic of me to think we are not going to have a few hiccups if this lasts for a while. To that end we have set up a twice daily tag-up with the COR to pass status and get direction as needed.

As you continue to go about your daily duties, keep in contact with you government counterparts. If you come across any issues or have any questions related to your taskings, bring them up to us and we can get them worked with the CO as needed during our tag-ups

I’m hoping this doesn’t last too long but during this partial shutdown, we can definitely continue to work our missions, procurements and scheduled maintenance actions so Wallops can keep meeting its launch commitments even through a shutdown.“