Investing in Space: NASA's months of reckoning

CNBC

3 days ago

For half a year now, NASA's been weathering a storm on every front, from its budget to its chain of command and potential program terminations. Employee uproar was an inevitable chapter of the saga.
A group of 360 current and former NASA employees have penned a letter rebuking "rapid and wasteful changes" across staffing, mission and budgetary cuts at the space agency.
"The last six months have seen rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission and caused catastrophic impacts on NASA's workforce," the letter says, noting concerns that the proposed downsizing in personnel and funding are "arbitrary and have been enacted in defiance of congressional appropriations law" and that "the consequences for the agency and the country alike are dire."
Signatories of the letter, titled the Voyager Declaration, urge the U.S. leadership not to implement "harmful" cuts and dispute "non-strategic staffing reductions," curtailing research projects, as well as cancelling contracts and participation in international missions or assignments for which Congress has already appropriated funding. It's no small list of objections raised at a time of broader uncertainty at NASA, which faces significant — and long chronicled — declines in funding and staff, amid a broader White House push to shrink down the federal workforce.
"NASA will never compromise on safety. Any reductions—including our current voluntary reduction—will be designed to protect safety-critical roles," NASA Spokesperson Bethany Stevens said in an emailed statement. "The reality is that President Trump has proposed billions of dollars for NASA science, demonstrating an ongoing commitment to communicating our scientific achievements. To ensure NASA delivers for the American people, we are continually evaluating mission lifecycles, not on sustaining outdated or lower-priority missions."
Adding to the tumult, NASA on Monday announced the high-level exit of Makenzie Lystrup, who will end her two-year stint as Goddard Space Flight Center director on Aug. 1. NASA says the step was communicated internally before any knowledge of the letter. It's not the first loss from the agency's senior ranks in recent months: Laurie Leshin stepped down from the director post of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in June. And more exits could be forthcoming: at the start of the month, Politico reported that at least 2,145 senior-level employees could depart NASA, many serving in core mission sets.
Throughout, NASA — notable for both its own achievements and its substantial contracts to the U.S. private space industry — has remained without long-term leadership, after U.S. President Donald Trump's initial pick, tech billionaire and Elon Musk ally Jared Isaacman, was unexpectedly removed from consideration back in May. Sean Duffy, Trump's transportation secretary, was appointed to hold up the fort as NASA's interim administrator just this month.
Inevitably, there's money on the line. NASA clinched a budget of $24.875 billion last year — 8.5% under its initial request and 2% below the funding of 2023 — that was matched in 2025. Under the Trump administration, the agency battled the possibility of a roughly 25% budget trim in 2026, although the U.S. House of Appropriations subcommittee has pushed back on these cuts. If enacted, the Trump funding proposal of $18.8 billion would have been the smallest NASA budget since before the U.S.' first crewed Moon landing via the Apollo 11 mission, commemorated this week on July 20.
In a Monday statement, Trump said his administration is "building on the legacy of Apollo 11" and endorsed NASA's initiatives focused on "returning Americans to the Moon —this time to stay — and putting the first boots on Mars." Colonizing the red planet has been a vocally stated objective of the U.S. president since his January return to office, echoing the ambitions of his then-ally Musk. The two have since parted ways through an explosive rift, but the dream to land U.S. astronauts on the Moon and Mars has gripped the nation, with a respective 67% and 65% of those surveyed in a CBS News/YouGov pollv now in favor.