Nasa planning to divest, demolish buildings at Maryland's Goddard Centre

By Sana Pashankar

 

Nasa is planning to divest or demolish nearly half of its footprint at the Goddard Spaceflight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, after President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce led to a mass employee exodus, according to an email seen by Bloomberg News. 

 

One of Nasa’s premier science Centres, Goddard operates the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope and works on science missions including ones that explore the solar system, study Mars’ atmosphere and monitor space weather. 

 

Goddard was the Nasa Centre hit the hardest by the Trump’s administration deferred resignation programmes, which caused around 30 per cent of its employees to leave, according to the Planetary Society. Goddard previously had more than 10,000 people, making it one of Nasa’s largest Centres. 

 

 

There are now about 6,600 workers at Goddard, acting Centre director Cynthia Simmons said in an email to employees, stating that the campus is underutilized. Nasa is looking to vacate buildings on its west side that will either “be made available to lease to other government agencies or partners or demolished if they have outlived their useful life,” she said in the email. 

 

News of the plans for Goddard’s buildings comes at a time when the administration’s effort to remake the federal government have included tearing down the White House’s East Wing to make way for a $300 million ballroom. 

 

In the email, Simmons added that “while there are certain capabilities we must keep, there are others that we can and should shed because they are readily available in the commercial sector.” 

 

The idea of outsourcing or reducing Nasa’s science portfolio is one that has been championed by the Trump administration and echoed in a leaked plan for the agency created by Jared Isaacman, the nominee for Nasa head. Trump’s initial budget request for the agency called for cutting Nasa’s science budget by over half. 

 

For months, employees had been asked to vacate their belongings from buildings on Goddard’s Greenbelt campus, which were later locked, even during the shutdown, according to an email seen by Bloomberg News. 

 

The abrupt moves raised concerns among advocates for the Centre such as Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who is ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.  

 

On Nov. 10, she sent a letter to Nasa’s acting chief, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, demanding a halt to plans to close and move laboratories and what she called mission-critical facilities.

 

Nasa has said that these moves are part of a longstanding plan approved in 2019 to divest, destroy and construct new facilities on Goddard’s campus. 

 

“New buildings are still set to be constructed following the consolidation and recalibration,” Bethany Stevens, a spokesperson from Nasa, said in a statement. “That’s something we will have the ability to shed more light on in the future as plans develop.” 

 

The administration’s budget request also called for terminating many science missions operated by Goddard and halving the Centre’s workforce.