After the space community braced for a brutal shake-up at NASA this week, a last-minute decision on Tuesday (Feb. 18) spared over 1,000 agency employees on probationary status from being dismissed.
The news comes amid an aggressive push by the Trump administration and so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — spearheaded by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — to downsize the federal workforce. Thousands of federal employees across the government have been dismissed in ongoing mass layoffs since last Thursday (Feb. 13). That's a day after the Trump administration ended its "fork in the road" deferred resignation offer that gave the nation's 2 million federal workers the option of resigning and retaining pay and benefits through the end of September. More than 75,000 federal employees have accepted this offer, according to the White House, including hundreds at NASA.
The space agency was among several federal agencies directed on Jan. 20 by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to "identify all employees on probationary periods." Probationary employees refer to new hires on trial periods at their workplaces that last one or two years, as well as long-time workers who have recently moved into new positions; probationary employees have limited civil protections, making them particularly vulnerable to termination.
According to an internal NASA email viewed by the Houston Chronicle, which cited the most "current information" as of 6:00 p.m. ET (3:00 p.m. PST) on Tuesday (Feb. 18), the "impending layoff plan" exempted employees at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Texas. It was not immediately clear why the employees were exempt or who made the decision.
As the former Chief of Staff of NASA, I know that NASA's ability to conduct exploration and science is dependent on its people. Indiscriminately firing the next generation of NASA scientists, engineers and wider team members is exactly the wrong step to secure America's…February 19, 2025
Directors of several NASA centers, including the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, also received confirmation by the White House that their probationary employees would be exempt from termination — for now, according to reporting by Ars Technica Tuesday evening.
"People are scared and not speaking up to voice dissent or disagreement," one NASA employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
The reprieve may be temporary, however. NASA's acting administrator Janet Petro noted in a Feb. 14 letter to employees that the agency is preparing to "initiate large-scale reductions in force" this week to comply with a U.S. executive order issued by President Donald Trump, signing off with the phrase: "Embrace the Challenge."
Following news reports that every probationary NASA employee will be fired on Tuesday, The Planetary Society, a non-profit organization co-founded by Carl Sagan to promote space exploration, has said it "strongly opposes the sudden, indiscriminate dismissal." If carried out, the mass layoffs would cut NASA's workforce by 10% and mark the largest involuntary workforce reduction at the agency since the end of the Apollo program in 1972, the organization said in a statement.
"These public servants — many of whom are just starting their careers— represent the future of NASA," the statement read. "Their removal does not reflect their abilities or commitment to advancing U.S. interests in space, only that they chose to join the nation's space agency within the past year."
The Planetary Society called on the Trump administration to reverse the "arbitrary decision" to fire upwards of 1,000 employees across NASA headquarters and 10 agency field centers, and urged the government to collaborate with Congress and other stakeholders "to define a clear strategy for continued U.S. leadership in space."
NASA offices associated with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives were shut down last month in accordance with another executive order penned by the Trump administration. All language related to these programs was scrubbed from public-facing websites to comply with the order as well. Funding contracts for the "Here to Observe" program, which paired undergraduate students from non-elite universities with scientists running NASA missions, were suspended. All meetings of the agency's Analysis/Assessment Groups (AGs) meant to provide "expert analysis of science priorities to NASA and the general public" have been indefinitely delayed.
In response to these changes, more than 1,100 scientists, including over 100 based outside the U.S., signed an open letter to NASA and the Trump administration.
"The actions of the past two weeks reverse advances made by generations of workers — representing the full diversity of the people in the United States — and rejection of what our scientific disciplines have identified as necessary for their progress," the letter reads. "We ask that all those in decision-making positions unequivocally condemn and act to reverse recent attacks on scientific integrity, federal grant funding for scientific research, and initiatives that broaden public participation in science."
In a statement shared with reporters on Feb. 19, Cheryl Warner, who is the NASA News Chief, said the agency "continues to work as quickly as possible" with guidance and direction provided by the OPM, and that it is currently validating hundreds of employees who accepted the deferred resignation offer before the deadline. "Some probationary employees have taken the deferred resignation offer and those individuals have been, or will be, on administrative leave by the end of this week," the statement read. "NASA is working with OPM on exemptions for those in the probationary period in mission critical functions.”
In another statement, Warner said it is "premature to discuss the impact to our agency, at this time."
Since Feb. 14, "inclusion" is once again listed as one of its core values on its webpage.
In addition to the Planetary Society, a handful of other science institutions have publicly condemned the dismantling of DEI programs and ongoing reductions in the federal workforce, which have affected employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) as well.
"Science is a naturally inclusive human endeavor unconfined to a single institution or profession — it is largely a cooperative, even global enterprise, inclusive of many communities," Mark Sykes, the director of the Planetary Science Institute, said in a statement. "Denouncing these principles and degrading their use is harmful to our science and to American competitiveness in the world."
While DOGE is on-site at NASA assessing the agency's spending for its science and space mission programs, over 700 agency employees have accepted the "fork in the road" government buyout proposal, Petro told reporters last Wednesday (Feb. 13) on the sidelines of a space industry conference in Washington.
"All the officials in charge are really trying to wrap our heads around all the executive orders as they're flying at us."
Editor's Update 2/19: This article was updated to include NASA's Feb. 19 statement sent to reporters.
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