NASA's on-again, off-again job cuts – what's the plan?

Lucky there isn't an asteroid headed for Earth for which a demoralized space agency might need to mount a redirect mission

Comment The US space agency, NASA, is famous for looking to the future. However, the fiasco of the last few days has cast doubt on the present, let alone what the coming weeks, months, or years might hold.

The Trump administration has started terminating federal employees in the probationary period of their employment – usually the first year or two of a new position.

On Tuesday February 18, NASA staffers on probationary status who were warned by managers they might be gone by the end of the day, leaked their concerns to the press. Upwards of 1,000 employees at the space agency were facing the axe.

The Planetary Society called it "the largest involuntary workforce reduction since the end of the Apollo program" and declared itself opposed to what it called "the sudden, indiscriminate dismissal."

It was a bit of a head-scratcher, for sure. NASA, after all, provides a three-to-one return on the dollars invested in it and the agency's budget is typically less than half a percent of the US federal budget.

NASA is also the very definition of soft power as far as the US is concerned. Its missions are famous worldwide, and the agency's logos are instantly recognizable.

However, the agency - or so it seemed - is not immune to the wider cost cutting being through by the current US administration, spearheaded by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. This effort has resulted in swathes of job losses, including workers for US nuclear weapons programs, many of whom reportedly had their terminations hurriedly rescinded when the importance of their roles became clear.

The same axe started to swing at NASA. Professor Garry Hunt, a former Voyager scientist, described this as "the Trump action against NASA which we all dreaded".

However, the threat was then lifted, for the time being at least.

It is not entirely clear what happened. A NASA spokesperson told The Register yesterday, "NASA is complying with the guidance and direction provided by OPM (Office of Personnel Management). It's premature to discuss the impact to our agency, at this time."

Hunt said he is aware of more than 1,000 letters of protest pertaining to NASA sent to Senate members within an hour of the first reports about the probationary employee cuts coming out on Tuesday. This could have swung opinion (particularly after the apparent erroneous termination of the workers in the nuclear program.) However, there are other explanations.

If there is a plan... what could it be?

The first is that the dismissals might have been a simple case of testing the waters and gauging the feedback from the policy. Or perhaps a general softening up so that if and when a round of cuts is confirmed, as long as it doesn't appear as draconian as the first, it might be less impactful.

A second possible scenario is that the next NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman, intervened to stop the cull until he'd had a chance to assess where cuts could be made. A cynic might wonder if any program at NASA unrelated to landing a human on Mars could be at risk.

The on-again-off-again nature of the headcount reduction will have rattled many civil servants at NASA and done no favors for the agency's morale. While flagship programs, such as the Artemis missions, are undoubtedly in the firing line, using a blunt instrument such as booting probationary staff risks impacting many parts of the agency.

Hunt suspects that NASA workers who were not civil servants would be unaffected by measures to terminate probationary employees. However, he also told us, "The big worry is cuts to the NASA budget."

Another source said, "We don't know what is going on, things happen and then they get reversed by judges, etc. A lot up in the air right now, including NASA. We hope the new Administrator... will bring clarity and stability."

There is no official confirmation of any cuts to the space agency's budget nor what programs might be at risk. However, the past few weeks' events indicate that the current US administration has a taste for blood, and while NASA appears to have escaped the axe this week, the agency might not be so lucky next time. ®