Press Release: Veritas Press C.I.C.
Author: Kamran Faqir
Article Date Published: 27 July 2025 at 12:17 GMT
Category: US | Politics | NASA
Source(s): Veritas Press C.I.C. | Multi News Agencies
Nearly 4,000 employees expected to exit as Trump administration slashes budget, prioritises lunar race with China and Mars colonisation over science and safety
The United States’ space agency NASA is bracing for a dramatic contraction of its workforce, with nearly 20 percent of its civil servants expected to depart under President Donald Trump’s aggressive efforts to slash the federal government and reshape the agency’s priorities.
According to an internal statement from NASA released Friday night, approximately 3,900 employees are set to leave the agency, about one in five of its total workforce, through a combination of voluntary resignations, retirements, and regular attrition. The cuts come amid a broader effort spearheaded by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has rolled out a so-called “deferred resignation program” across key federal agencies, with NASA among the hardest hit.
Roughly 3,000 employees participated in the program’s second round, which closed Friday at midnight, joining the 870 who enrolled in the first round earlier this year. An additional 500 staff have left due to normal turnover, agency officials confirmed. From a pre-Trump workforce of over 18,000 civil servants, NASA is expected to shrink to just 14,000 employees, marking its smallest workforce in decades.
“Streamlined, Efficient”, But At What Cost?
“Safety remains a top priority for our agency as we balance the need to become a more streamlined and more efficient organisation,” a NASA spokesperson said in the statement, “and work to ensure we remain fully capable of pursuing a Golden Era of exploration and innovation, including to the Moon and Mars.”
However, the internal morale tells a different story. In a widely circulated letter signed by over 360 NASA employees earlier this month, workers warned that the drastic cuts could have “dire” consequences, not only for internal safety protocols but also for long-term scientific research and global leadership in space.
“We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritises political momentum over human safety, scientific advancement, and efficient use of public resources,” the letter read. “These cuts are arbitrary and have been enacted in defiance of congressional appropriations law.”
NASA’s civil servants, engineers, scientists, safety officers, and project managers form the backbone of critical space missions, from Mars rover operations to orbital climate monitoring. Many staff say they are being forced out at a time when the agency is being asked to take on some of the most ambitious goals in its history.
Budget Axe Falls As Moon-Mars Race Heats Up:
The layoffs come on the heels of the Trump administration’s 2025 budget proposal, which aims to cut NASA’s overall budget by 24 percent, slashing it from $24 billion to just $18 billion. The budget reflects a sharp pivot away from Earth science, climate monitoring, and international collaboration, hallmarks of the agency’s prior mission portfolio, toward what Trump has dubbed “America’s space supremacy.”
In line with that vision, the budget sharply increases funding for the Artemis program, a crewed mission to the Moon, and outlines an accelerated timeline to reach Mars within the next two decades. Administration officials say the United States must “beat China back to the Moon” and secure strategic dominance over lunar and Martian exploration.
China’s space agency, CNSA, has announced plans for its first crewed lunar landing by 2030, and in recent years has successfully landed multiple robotic missions on the Moon’s far side and Mars. Meanwhile, Artemis has been plagued by delays, supply chain issues, and now, massive personnel losses.
Leadership Turmoil And Musk Fallout:
The personnel crisis is compounded by an ongoing leadership vacuum. NASA remains without a permanent administrator after the administration’s first nominee, billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4 and commander of the private SpaceX mission Inspiration4, was quietly withdrawn in late May following bipartisan scepticism and a public feud between Trump and Elon Musk, his early supporter.
Isaacman, seen by some as a private sector figurehead lacking the scientific leadership credentials of previous NASA administrators, was backed by Musk, who had served as a senior adviser to DOGE before abruptly leaving the White House in June after a series of clashes over spending priorities and defence contracting.
In the interim, former Wisconsin congressman and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been appointed acting NASA administrator. Trump praised Duffy for doing a “TREMENDOUS job” in both transportation and aerospace oversight, despite criticism from scientific circles that he lacks deep space science or engineering expertise.
Science Slashed, Safety Questioned:
Among the programs facing the chopping block are NASA’s Earth Science Division, which oversees critical monitoring of climate change, weather systems, and environmental hazards. These programs have long been targeted by Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed climate science as “politicised junk.”
At the same time, NASA engineers warn that deep personnel losses threaten mission safety, especially for complex human spaceflight programs such as Artemis. “You can’t just lose 4,000 highly trained aerospace professionals and expect nothing to go wrong,” one senior engineer at Johnson Space Centre told NewsNation on condition of anonymity.
Veteran astronaut Terry Virts, speaking to Politico, said the administration’s actions risk creating a “brain drain” at the agency. “The people who know how to keep astronauts alive, run mission control, maintain propulsion systems, those people are being driven out while we’re talking about sending humans to Mars? It’s insane.”
Political Motives Under Fire:
Critics argue that the Trump administration’s restructuring of NASA reflects broader ideological motives. The Department of Government Efficiency, spearheaded during Trump’s second term, has used “resignation incentives” and “administrative leave programs” to effectively purge federal agencies of long-serving staff, especially in science, climate, and regulatory roles.
“There is a systematic dismantling of federal science agencies underway,” said Dr. Jane Serrano, a former White House science adviser. “The people who keep the lights on, who understand the institutional memory of these agencies, are being pushed out under the guise of efficiency.”
For now, Trump continues to tout the reshaped NASA as the vanguard of a “Second Space Age.” But with thousands of experienced staff heading for the exit, and a shrinking budget but rising ambitions, it remains unclear whether the United States can realise its lunar and Martian aspirations, or whether it is gutting the very foundation on which they must be built.
Conclusion: A Dangerous Trajectory: Cuts, Chaos, And Control.
The mass exodus of nearly 4,000 skilled professionals from NASA is not an isolated restructuring; it is a glaring symptom of a deeper, more deliberate dismantling of public institutions under the Trump administration’s second term. Cloaked in the language of “efficiency” and “streamlining,” these cuts represent an assault not only on scientific, educational progress and public service but on the foundational stability of American society itself.
Slashing a fifth of NASA’s workforce amid the most ambitious space exploration push in decades is, at best, reckless mismanagement, and at worst, a calculated political manoeuvre to erode federal expertise while centralising executive control. Beyond the agency, the implications are stark. With thousands more highly educated professionals out of work, unemployment is set to spike in surrounding sectors, from aerospace contractors and research universities to local service economies that depend on federal employment hubs.
As joblessness rises, so too will localised poverty, social unrest, and crime, especially in communities around NASA centres in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and California. Instead of investing in jobs, housing, and science, the administration is bankrolling carceral infrastructure and militarised policing to suppress the consequences of its own economic sabotage.
This is not simply a workforce reduction; it is a reordering of the American state. With federal science gutted, dissent criminalised, and public dissent increasingly portrayed as a national security threat, we are witnessing the slow pivot toward a surveillance-heavy, police-centric model of governance. One that punishes poverty instead of addressing its causes. One that sidelines climate science as storms intensify. One who dreams of conquering Mars while letting Earth burn. The question now is not whether America will return to the Moon. It is whether the country can survive its own political gravity, dragging public institutions into freefall, crushing democratic accountability under the weight of autocratic ambition, and replacing science with spectacle. If NASA’s gutting is a test case, the results are already clear: we are launching toward a dystopian future, not a golden era of exploration.
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