More Than 2,100 NASA Staff Are Getting Gutted

Elon Musk might have been deposed from DOGE, but the government cuts are still coming.

As reported by Politico, some 2,145 high-level NASA employees are about to be launched out of the agency as efforts to cut US government spending continues. The employees represent those with G-13, G-14, and G-15 status — typically specialized or managerial roles which start around the six-figure salary range.

The workers are part of a group of nearly 2,700 civilian employees who've agreed to leave NASA voluntarily, after the Trump administration made two buyout offers earlier in the year; Politico notes that over 67 percent of them are assigned to "core mission sets" like human space flight, mission support, or science departments.

This is all on top of the White House's 2026 budget proposal, which would gut a quarter of NASA's current funding — the largest NASA cut ever proposed.

NASA was once touted as the best place to work in US government, and was America's third most popular government agency, behind the National Parks Service and the US Postal Service, according to the Pew Research Center.

That being the case, taxpayers — and the broader science community — are understandably furious.

"This is catastrophic for space science and astrophysics," decried theoretical physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. "Globally catastrophic, not just for Americans."

Astrophysicist Robert Rutledge noted that 607 staffers are departing from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, "where much of NASA astrophysics is housed."

"With cuts like these... the United States effectively abandons its decades-old global leadership position in astrophysics," Rutledge wrote on social media.

Other hard-hit NASA centers include the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which is set to lose 311 employees, the Johnson Space Center in Texas, set to lose 366, and the Langley Research Center in Virginia, which is losing 281 workers, per Politico.

The cuts come as the Trump administration looks poised to privatize huge swaths of the federal government, like the National Weather Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which previously provided free weather prediction and research services to the public.

In previous months, the government has awarded Musk's SpaceX with some lucrative contracts, like the bizarre "Golden Dome" initiative, or the Pentagon's satellite launch contract.

Though Musk and Trump's fiery breakup looked like it could put the future of SpaceX's government contracts in jeopardy, aerospace experts says it's too little too late, as SpaceX is now "indispensable" to the government.

How deep Trump's NASA cuts end up going remains to be seen — but it's doubtful Musk's company can hold a candle to the storied agency.

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