[WASHINGTON] National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) will lose roughly 3,870 employees through a voluntary resignation programme, part of a broad push from US President Donald Trump’s administration to reduce the federal workforce.
The numbers are subject to change as Nasa reviews applications, including if an employee withdraws from the programme or a resignation is not approved, the US space agency said on Friday (Jul 25).
“Safety remains a top priority for our agency as we balance the need to become a more streamlined and more efficient organisation and work to ensure we remain fully capable of pursuing a Golden Era of exploration and innovation, including to the Moon and Mars,” Nasa said.
Nasa has offered employees two separate opportunities in 2025 to leave through the government’s Deferred Resignation Programme. The agency said its expected remaining civil servant workforce would be about 14,000 people, following both resignation programmes, as well as normal attrition of about 500 people over the same time period.
The first round came during the start of the Trump administration when federal workers received e-mails offering them the opportunity to take a buyout, an effort spearheaded by the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency. About 870 people, or 4.8 per cent of the Nasa workforce, took the offer then.
Nasa initiated its own second round of deferred resignation beginning in early June, with a deadline to opt in by Jul 25. About 3,000 personnel, or 16.4 per cent of the workforce, took it up, the agency said on Friday.
BT in your inbox
Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.
Executives at the space agency, who have been working to reduce headcount to comply with the Trump administration’s goal of shrinking the federal workforce, have spearheaded deferred resignation as a way to avoid layoffs.
“The reason we are doing this is to minimise any involuntary workforce reductions in the future,” Nasa’s former acting administrator Janet Petro said during an agency town hall on Jun 25, according to an audio recording obtained by Bloomberg. “That is our whole goal, minimising that.”
Nasa had sought a “blanket waiver” in February to save all of the agency’s probationary employees from layoffs.
The prospect of a mass exodus of employees from Nasa has raised alarm bells within the industry and at the agency, with some experts arguing that the cuts will cause Nasa to lose some of its best talent.
In a letter to newly appointed Nasa interim administrator Sean Duffy titled The Voyager Declaration, hundreds of former and current employees warned Duffy, who is also the head of the Transportation Department, that workforce reductions could jeopardise the safety and efficiency of operations.
“Thousands of Nasa civil servant employees have already been terminated, resigned or retired early, taking with them highly specialised, irreplaceable knowledge crucial to carrying out Nasa’s mission,” they wrote in the letter to Duffy. BLOOMBERG
