A Top NASA Official Is Among Thousands of Staff Leaving the Agency

You possibly can add one other title to the hundreds of staff leaving NASA because the Trump administration primes the area company for a 25 % finances reduce.On Monday, NASA introduced that Makenzie Lystrup will go away her publish as director of the Goddard Area Flight Middle on Friday, August 1. Lystrup has held the highest job at Goddard since April 2023, overseeing a employees of greater than 8,000 civil servants and contractor staff and a finances final 12 months of about $4.7 billion.These figures make Goddard the biggest of NASA’s 10 area facilities primarily dedicated to scientific analysis and improvement of robotic area missions, with a finances and workforce akin to NASA’s human spaceflight facilities in Texas, Florida, and Alabama. Officers at Goddard handle the James Webb and Hubble telescopes in area, and Goddard engineers are assembling the Nancy Grace Roman Area Telescope, one other flagship observatory scheduled for launch late subsequent 12 months.“We’re grateful to Makenzie for her management at NASA Goddard for greater than two years, together with her work to encourage a Golden Age of explorers, scientists, and engineers,” Vanessa Wyche, NASA’s appearing affiliate administrator, stated in an announcement.Cynthia Simmons, Goddard’s deputy director, will take over as appearing chief on the area heart. Simmons began work at Goddard as a contract engineer 25 years in the past.Lystrup got here to NASA from Ball Aerospace, now a part of BAE Techniques, the place she managed the corporate’s work on civilian area tasks for NASA and different federal companies. Earlier than becoming a member of Ball Aerospace, Lystrup earned a doctorate in astrophysics from College Faculty London and performed analysis as a planetary astronomer.Makenzie Lystrup at a panel dialogue with company heart administrators on the 2024 Artemis Suppliers Convention in Washington, DC.Courtesy of Joel Kowsky/NasaFormal DissentThe announcement of Lystrup’s departure from Goddard got here hours after the discharge of an open letter to NASA’s interim administrator, transportation secretary Sean Duffy, signed by tons of of present and former company staff. The letter, titled the “The Voyager Declaration,” identifies what the signatories name “current insurance policies which have or threaten to waste public sources, compromise human security, weaken nationwide safety, and undermine the core NASA mission.”“Main programmatic shifts at NASA have to be carried out strategically in order that dangers are managed rigorously,” the letter reads. “As a substitute, the final six months have seen fast and wasteful modifications which have undermined our mission and prompted catastrophic impacts on NASA’s workforce. We’re compelled to talk up when our management prioritizes political momentum over human security, scientific development, and environment friendly use of public sources.”The letter is modeled on related paperwork of dissent penned by staff protesting cuts and coverage modifications on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and the Environmental Safety Company.