In an email to CBC, NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens dismissed those concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“NASA will never compromise on safety. Any reductions \u2014 including our current voluntary reduction \u2014 will be designed to protect safety-critical roles,” she said.<\/p>\n
$6B US in proposed cuts<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking a 25 per cent, or roughly $6 billion US ($8.22 billion Cdn), budget cut for NASA as a whole, and\u00a050 per cent cut for the scientific research division.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“President Trump has proposed billions of dollars for NASA science, demonstrating an ongoing commitment to communicating our scientific achievements,” Stevens said.<\/p>\n
Helson says that’s technically true, but wildly disingenuous.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That’s like saying your bicycle is missing one wheel, but don’t worry, you’ve still got another wheel,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump’s cuts have yet to be approved by Congress, which holds NASA’s purse strings. But in\u00a0leaked audio from a NASA town hall meeting last month<\/a>, several high-ranking officials said they will be moving ahead with them anyway.<\/p>\n Zoe Lofgren and Valerie P. Foushee, the top Democrats on a House committee overseeing NASA’s budget, have said implementing the cuts prematurely would be “flatly illegal” and “offensive to our constitutional system.”<\/a><\/p>\n The bipartisan committee has\u00a0called on NASA not to implement the cuts.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Fears of reprisal<\/p>\n The open letter, called The Voyager Declaration, is addressed to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who Trump appointed interim NASA administrator earlier this month.\u00a0Duffy’s office directed calls for comment to NASA.\u00a0<\/p>\n The declaration specifically cites concerns that, if NASA continues along this path,\u00a0existing missions will be cancelled, valuable scientific data will be lost,\u00a0international partners will be abandoned, development programs will be nixed, staffing will be gutted and safety measures will be scaled back.\u00a0<\/p>\n It follows similar open letters by workers at the National Institutes of Health<\/a> (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency<\/a> (EPA), the latter of which suspended\u00a0144 employees who signed.<\/a><\/p>\n NASA workers fear a similar retribution.<\/p>\n Roughly half of those who signed the letter did so anonymously,\u00a0and only four signatories who currently work with NASA are willing to speak out on record, according to Stand Up For Science<\/a>, the organization that helped organize this letter, and those at NIH and EPA.\u00a0<\/p>\n Helson\u00a0is one of those four, and says he’s only comfortable speaking because his work with NASA is in co-operation with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a position he says gives him more academic freedom than those employed directly by NASA.<\/p>\n “A lot of my coworkers who are civil servants are very afraid right now, and so I want to use what I perceive to be my advantages in my position to speak out on their behalf,” he said.<\/p>\n “People are afraid that they’re going to lose their job.”<\/p>\n NASA did not respond to questions from CBC about whether it would retaliate against the letter’s signatories.<\/p>\n The letter is framed an act of\u00a0“Formal Dissent,” a reference to a NASA policy that empowers employees to speak up against decisions they believe are “not in the best interest of NASA.”<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/usa-autos-trump.JPG\")
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is NASA’s interim director, appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump. (Anna Rose Layden\/Reuters)<\/p>\n