NASA to Cut 2,000+ Senior Employees

At least 2,145 senior-ranking NASA employees are set to leave under a push to shed staff, according to documents obtained by POLITICO — potentially spelling trouble for White House space policy and depriving the agency of decades of experience.

The 2,145 employees are those in GS-13 to GS-15 positions — senior-level government ranks that are typically reserved for those with specialized skills or management responsibilities. The losses are particularly concentrated at higher levels, with 875 GS-15 employees set to leave, according to the documents.

Those 2,145 employees, in turn, make up the bulk of the 2,694 civil staff who have agreed to leave NASA under a slate of offers that fall within broader administration efforts to trim the federal workforce, according to the documents. NASA has offered staff early retirement, buyouts and deferred resignations.

Many of those leaving also serve in NASA’s core mission sets, according to the documents. Those leaving include 1,818 staff serving in mission areas like science or human space flight, with the rest performing mission support roles like IT, facilities management or finance.

The losses are spread across each of NASA’s 10 regional centers, where much of the agency’s work is done and which focus on everything from planning astronaut missions to the moon to sending out deep space probes.

The Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is set to lose the most staff at 607; Johnson Space Center in Texas will lose 366 staff; Kennedy Space Center in Florida will lose 311; and NASA headquarters in Washington will lose 307. Langley Research Center in Virginia will lose 281, Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will lose 279, and Cleveland’s Glenn Research Center will lose 191 staff.

At Johnson, home of NASA’s human space flight operations, 366 staff are set to leave, or nearly all of the 419 staff the White House envisioned cutting in its 2026 budget. At Kennedy, home to NASA’s primary rocket launch site, 311 have left out of a White House target of 504. With NASA still accepting deferred resignations, more could easily leave.

Even small losses, meanwhile, have a large impact. NASA’s legislative affairs staff, which helps answer questions from Congress on the agency’s mission, is seeing five staffers leave. That office typically numbers around 35, meaning a staff reduction of nearly 15 percent, according to a former staffer, granted anonymity to discuss staffing levels.