Amid tense clashes between NASA and Musk, two NASA science missions launch on SpaceX rocket

Los Angeles Times

12-03-2025

After every federal employee received an email asking them to list their recent accomplishments, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X, warning any employee who didn't respond would be terminated. NASA, instead, asserted that replying was optional and that its leadership would handle the matter.Two weeks after the clash, the space agency hitched a ride to orbit on a SpaceX rocket.
It's another indicator that, despite an aggressive push by the Trump Administration and Musk to significantly reduce government spending and the federal workforce that have led to some tense public disputes, NASA's space science missions — and its relationship with SpaceX, the dominant launch provider in the U.S. — have so far remained relatively unscathed.
The space agency narrowly escaped the mass firing of its probationary employees and has stayed out of the political crosshairs of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, which is working to slash funding at agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency.
It has also survived some strained squabbles with the SpaceX CEO, including Musk's call to deorbit the International Space Station as soon as possible, before its scheduled 2030 decommissioning date.
Yet, tangible threats to the space agency's status quo are looming on the horizon, space-policy experts say, including potentially significant budget cuts and staff reductions through the normal processes of government.
'There's a lot of this highly disruptive, very symbolic culture war … that's taking a lot of attention,' said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a Pasadena-based nonprofit advocating for space science and exploration. 'But the bigger issue is the more quotidian of, will NASA get the money it needs to do the projects it's told to do.'
SpaceX launched two NASA spacecraft Tuesday — both part of the agency's Explorers Program, designed to provide frequent flight and funding opportunities for space science missions — on its Falcon 9 rocket.
It included a spacecraft from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge that will study the rapid expansion that occurred during the first split-second of the universe and a mission from the Southwest Research Institute, a private nonprofit organization based in Texas and Colorado, that will explore the dynamics of solar wind.
Despite the public clashes, a NASA spokesperson said the agency's relationship with Musk's company remains strong.
'NASA is working with partners like SpaceX to build an economy in low Earth orbit and take our next giant leaps in exploration at the Moon and Mars for the benefit of all,' the spokesperson said in a statement. 'To date, NASA invested more than $15 billion in SpaceX for its work under numerous agency contracts.'
The Falcon 9 has become one of the U.S.' most prolific and reliable rides to space (and unlike SpaceX's developmental Starship rocket, it does not frequently explode). Much of the rocket's success is thanks to a nearly two-decade partnership with NASA.
The space agency funded the development of the rocket in 2006 as part of a push to foster a burgeoning private launch industry ahead of the retirement of the Space Shuttle. Two years later, SpaceX was the first private company to reach space with a liquid-fueled rocket, using a scaled-down precursor to the Falcon 9.
In the years since, NASA has given SpaceX billions in contracts to shuttle supplies and, later, astronauts to and from the ISS; launch science missions far beyond Earth's orbit; and now, develop a spacecraft to deorbit the ISS in 2030 and the Starship rocket to carry humans back to the moon.
As SpaceX excelled in rocket development, other private launch companies — and NASA itself — struggled to keep up.
In 2014, NASA awarded Boeing $4.2 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion to develop capsules to launch astronauts to the ISS. But while SpaceX has launched 10 missions to the ISS with NASA astronauts to date, Boeing has managed only one botched crewed test flight that left two U.S. astronauts on the ISS without a ride back, until SpaceX agreed to take them home.
(Notably, that involved another incident pitting Musk against NASA, in which the former described the astronauts as 'stranded,' despite the latter's insistence that this was a mischaracterization.)
Meanwhile, NASA's Space Shuttle successor, the Space Launch System, has accrued billions in cost overruns and years of delays. The rocket's side boosters and engines were originally projected to cost $7 billion over 14 years of development and flights. That's grown to at least $13.1 billion over 25 years, according to a report from the NASA Office of Inspector General.
The result: Over the years, America's space agency has become increasingly dependent on SpaceX and Musk for access to space.
Then, the Trump administration created DOGE — a temporary organization in the executive office (and not an official government department) — and instated Musk as a special government employee to head it.
The administration began firing probationary employees — government workers in their first year of a new role, who are not yet considered full employees — across the federal government, including at the National Park Service, U.S. Agency for International Development, and most recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
On Feb. 18, NASA employees braced for a similar cut, but it never came. The agency announced it had worked with the Office of Personnel Management to avoid the firings and that about 5% of the workforce had resigned voluntarily as part of a separate program to reduce the size of the federal workforce.
Instead, the agency began undertaking a longer-term by-the-books reduction of staff mandated by an executive order. The agency, in a document outlining the process, stated it intends to proceed in a manner that 'minimizes adverse impact on employees and limits disruption to critical Agency missions, programs, operations, and organizations.'
The agency is partnering with OPM and DOGE to carry out the reduction and does not have a specific percent reduction goal, a NASA spokesperson said in a statement.
At a Cabinet meeting, Musk said DOGE's goal is not to be 'capricious or unfair' and said the temporary organization has no target numbers. Instead, he wants to keep 'everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well.'
NASA began the layoffs Monday with 23 employees in advisory science and policy offices, as well as a diversity, equity and inclusion branch.
Employees at JPL, a government contractor funded by NASA but managed by Caltech, are exempt from the reduction, both NASA and JPL confirmed. However, the laboratory remains at the whims of federal funding for its missions.
While, publicly, NASA's science funding has not seen the same level of scrutiny or cuts as other science agencies, Congress has a quick-approaching March 14 budget deadline, and, in line with the White House, the Republican-controlled chambers are set on decreasing federal spending.
The implications for NASA's science programs could be significant.
In an example budget proposal for the 2023 fiscal year, Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget proposed slashing NASA's science budget in half — which would far outpace previous budget cuts to the agency's science programs.
Typically, NASA's science budget follows the trends of the rest of the discretionary budget, which doesn't include mandatory spending like Medicare and Social Security that is managed outside the typical budget process.
'People love NASA, but in general, NASA's budget doesn't buck the trend of overall non-defense discretionary,' said Dreier. 'If that pie gets bigger, NASA's slice gets a little bigger, but if it gets smaller, NASA's slice doesn't stay big.'
When Congress has tough choices to make over which programs to fund, it's often the science and technology side — and not the human spaceflight side — of the agency that sees the biggest cuts.
Notably — with representatives jockeying to bring funding to their own constituents — conservative-leaning states are home to NASA's biggest human spaceflight centers, like the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Texas. More liberal states are home to many of the science-focused centers, like JPL and Maryland's Goddard Space Flight Center, which runs the Explorers Program.
And within the science spending, it's the big flagship science missions, like the James Webb Space Telescope, that survive, whereas smaller missions, like those in the Explorers Program, end up on the chopping block.
The bigger missions often have many more advocates across the country ready to defend the programs, and stir up backlash if they're canceled.
The Senate has yet to hold hearings for Trump's NASA administrator pick, Jared Isaacman, a Musk and SpaceX business partner who rode to space on a Falcon 9 rocket in 2021 as part of the first space mission with an all-civilian crew.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.