An office in an obscure corner of the federal government that NASA has relied on to safely land astronauts on the moon and robotic probes on Mars is facing pressure to cut its tight-knit team of experts by at least 20%, according to two people familiar with the mandate.
The thinning of the staff has already started at the Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, the people said, the result of an assortment of voluntary resignation offers put forward by the Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire Elon Musk. More employees are expected to be laid off in the coming weeks, following a new open call for early retirements and resignations on April 4. The office, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey under the Department of the Interior, has been subject to the cost-cutting efforts initiated in a mass email that Musk's team sent across the federal government in January.
Representatives for the Interior Department, the USGS and the astrogeology center did not reply to requests for comment on the staff reductions or their potential ramifications.
The cuts could affect crewed missions to Mars in the future, a key goal of Musk, who founded SpaceX. He has said he conceived of the company to make human life multiplanetary.
Matthew Golombek, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has worked on the selection of landing sites for multiple probes to Mars, described the Astrogeology Science Center's precision mapping as "the gold standard that basically everyone in the community uses."
At the start of the year, the office had 53 employees. Eight are already set to leave, with more encouraged to consider the latest offer.
Its experts have been relied on "for just about all the landing-site selections, because of the excellence of their mapping," Golombek said. Cuts to the center's "cadre of incredibly experienced and knowledgeable people," he added, would lead to "worse products to go by."
Any consequences of downsizing the office's team of interplanetary mapmakers could be significant: President Donald Trump's nominee to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman, told a Senate committee on Wednesday that he would propose "paralleling" efforts to send astronauts to Mars alongside existing plans to send crewed missions to the moon.
One researcher in the Flagstaff office, which is known simply as "Astro" among many experts in the field, worried that personnel lost amid these shifting budget priorities could prove fatal to critical projects in mapping and planetary science, including the identification of hidden water-ice deposits on Mars that would prove invaluable to human exploration.
"I can't imagine taking 10 people at random out of the 40-something who are left and there not being whole projects that would just have to get canceled," the researcher said.
Even the departure of just five workers, depending on their seniority or areas of expertise, the researcher added, would leave the office in big trouble.
The two employees, who requested anonymity to protect their careers in government, became familiar with this latest call for volunteers to the "deferred resignation/retirement program" during recent staff meetings. Mandatory layoffs, known in the federal government as reductions in force, could follow, one of these employees said, if not enough employees volunteer.
The field of astrogeology is interdisciplinary, with experts in terrestrial fields like mineralogy, volcanology and geography in the service of space exploration. Although the USGS astrogeology center is part of the Interior Department, it works very closely with NASA and is "almost entirely funded by NASA," according to one recent budget document. Over the decades, the center's experts have taken a lead role in generating detailed topographical maps of Mars, the moon and other worlds as well as strategic plans and scientific goals for generations of NASA missions.
Its scientists also taught crash courses in lunar geology to the Apollo astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, to better inform their collecting of rock samples. The training has been revived for NASA's Artemis program, which plans to return astronauts to the moon's surface as soon as 2027.
The office's geology experts raced to help NASA find new landing sites for the first of its two historic Viking Mars landers in 1976 after an original site was found to be too dangerous. In 2021, the Perseverance rover used the center's maps and software to autonomously guide itself safely to the Martian surface.
"Perseverance was the first rover, and lander, to have onboard maps actually created by the USGS folks," said Christopher Edwards, a professor of planetary science at Northern Arizona University, which is a few miles south of Astro's offices in Flagstaff.
"They'd create these hazard maps, and as the rover was descending it would actually be doing a real-time matching with maps onboard," Edwards said. "You know, 'Oh, hey! This is a safe place to land! This is not a safe place to land!'"
Companies that are part of the booming commercial space sector have also relied on the expertise of the Astrogeology Science Center.
"SpaceX would sometimes call USGS with questions, and the folks at USGS were quite excited," said David S.F. Portree, a former archivist and public information manager with the Astrogeology Science Center who is now a semiretired historian and science writer in Arizona. Portree recalled multiple occasions in which the office did work for the firm.
One project, described by a current Astrogeology staff member, involved helping SpaceX assess whether the company could land its Dragon space capsule on land within the continental United States. (SpaceX ultimately opted for water landings.)
SpaceX did not reply to a request for comment on past or current work with the astrogeology center, or how it would affect the company's Mars plans.
Portree -- who wrote an official history of 50 years of planning by NASA for a crewed mission to Mars -- said that he was worried that reductions in force would mean senior scientists wouldn't be able to pass on their often highly specialized expertise to the young researchers who could one day advance their field. That extends to the Trump administration's executive order for a governmentwide hiring freeze, which affected the office's student contractor programs.
"It has ripple effects well beyond Flagstaff, well beyond Astro," he continued. "You shut off the tap. You prevent the creation of the next generation."
Edwards, at Northern Arizona, said he was worried about the administration's push to fire new hires known as probationary workers en masse.
"All these temporary or provisional type positions, they're not just for young people," Edwards said. "It's just what you move into when you become a federal employee. They might actually be firing subject-matter experts."
"That's crazy to me," he added.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
The thinning of the staff has already started at the Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, the people said, the result of an assortment of voluntary resignation offers put forward by the Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire Elon Musk. More employees are expected to be laid off in the coming weeks, following a new open call for early retirements and resignations on April 4. The office, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey under the Department of the Interior, has been subject to the cost-cutting efforts initiated in a mass email that Musk's team sent across the federal government in January.
Representatives for the Interior Department, the USGS and the astrogeology center did not reply to requests for comment on the staff reductions or their potential ramifications.
The cuts could affect crewed missions to Mars in the future, a key goal of Musk, who founded SpaceX. He has said he conceived of the company to make human life multiplanetary.
Matthew Golombek, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has worked on the selection of landing sites for multiple probes to Mars, described the Astrogeology Science Center's precision mapping as "the gold standard that basically everyone in the community uses."
At the start of the year, the office had 53 employees. Eight are already set to leave, with more encouraged to consider the latest offer.
Its experts have been relied on "for just about all the landing-site selections, because of the excellence of their mapping," Golombek said. Cuts to the center's "cadre of incredibly experienced and knowledgeable people," he added, would lead to "worse products to go by."
Any consequences of downsizing the office's team of interplanetary mapmakers could be significant: President Donald Trump's nominee to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman, told a Senate committee on Wednesday that he would propose "paralleling" efforts to send astronauts to Mars alongside existing plans to send crewed missions to the moon.
One researcher in the Flagstaff office, which is known simply as "Astro" among many experts in the field, worried that personnel lost amid these shifting budget priorities could prove fatal to critical projects in mapping and planetary science, including the identification of hidden water-ice deposits on Mars that would prove invaluable to human exploration.
"I can't imagine taking 10 people at random out of the 40-something who are left and there not being whole projects that would just have to get canceled," the researcher said.
Even the departure of just five workers, depending on their seniority or areas of expertise, the researcher added, would leave the office in big trouble.
The two employees, who requested anonymity to protect their careers in government, became familiar with this latest call for volunteers to the "deferred resignation/retirement program" during recent staff meetings. Mandatory layoffs, known in the federal government as reductions in force, could follow, one of these employees said, if not enough employees volunteer.
The field of astrogeology is interdisciplinary, with experts in terrestrial fields like mineralogy, volcanology and geography in the service of space exploration. Although the USGS astrogeology center is part of the Interior Department, it works very closely with NASA and is "almost entirely funded by NASA," according to one recent budget document. Over the decades, the center's experts have taken a lead role in generating detailed topographical maps of Mars, the moon and other worlds as well as strategic plans and scientific goals for generations of NASA missions.
Its scientists also taught crash courses in lunar geology to the Apollo astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, to better inform their collecting of rock samples. The training has been revived for NASA's Artemis program, which plans to return astronauts to the moon's surface as soon as 2027.
The office's geology experts raced to help NASA find new landing sites for the first of its two historic Viking Mars landers in 1976 after an original site was found to be too dangerous. In 2021, the Perseverance rover used the center's maps and software to autonomously guide itself safely to the Martian surface.
"Perseverance was the first rover, and lander, to have onboard maps actually created by the USGS folks," said Christopher Edwards, a professor of planetary science at Northern Arizona University, which is a few miles south of Astro's offices in Flagstaff.
"They'd create these hazard maps, and as the rover was descending it would actually be doing a real-time matching with maps onboard," Edwards said. "You know, 'Oh, hey! This is a safe place to land! This is not a safe place to land!'"
Companies that are part of the booming commercial space sector have also relied on the expertise of the Astrogeology Science Center.
"SpaceX would sometimes call USGS with questions, and the folks at USGS were quite excited," said David S.F. Portree, a former archivist and public information manager with the Astrogeology Science Center who is now a semiretired historian and science writer in Arizona. Portree recalled multiple occasions in which the office did work for the firm.
One project, described by a current Astrogeology staff member, involved helping SpaceX assess whether the company could land its Dragon space capsule on land within the continental United States. (SpaceX ultimately opted for water landings.)
SpaceX did not reply to a request for comment on past or current work with the astrogeology center, or how it would affect the company's Mars plans.
Portree -- who wrote an official history of 50 years of planning by NASA for a crewed mission to Mars -- said that he was worried that reductions in force would mean senior scientists wouldn't be able to pass on their often highly specialized expertise to the young researchers who could one day advance their field. That extends to the Trump administration's executive order for a governmentwide hiring freeze, which affected the office's student contractor programs.
"It has ripple effects well beyond Flagstaff, well beyond Astro," he continued. "You shut off the tap. You prevent the creation of the next generation."
Edwards, at Northern Arizona, said he was worried about the administration's push to fire new hires known as probationary workers en masse.
"All these temporary or provisional type positions, they're not just for young people," Edwards said. "It's just what you move into when you become a federal employee. They might actually be firing subject-matter experts."
"That's crazy to me," he added.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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