{"id":22346,"date":"2025-07-25T08:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T08:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/22346\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T08:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T08:42:10","slug":"investing-in-space-nasas-months-of-reckoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/22346\/","title":{"rendered":"Investing in Space: NASA’s months of reckoning"},"content":{"rendered":"

CNBC’s Investing in Space newsletter offers a\u00a0view into the business of space exploration and privatization, delivered straight to your inbox.\u00a0Sign up to receive future editions.<\/a><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 2: A NASA logo is displayed at the entrance to the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building on June 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Carter\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Kevin Carter | Getty Images News | Getty Images<\/p>\n

Overview: HEADLINE<\/p>\n

For half a year now, NASA’s been weathering a storm on every front, from its budget to its chain of command and potential program terminations. Employee uproar was an inevitable chapter of the saga.<\/p>\n

A group of 360 current and former NASA employees have penned a letter rebuking “rapid and wasteful changes” across staffing, mission and budgetary cuts at the space agency.<\/p>\n

“The last six months have seen rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission and caused catastrophic impacts on NASA’s workforce,” the letter says, noting concerns that the proposed downsizing in personnel and funding are “arbitrary and have been enacted in defiance of congressional appropriations law” and that “the consequences for the agency and the country alike are dire.”<\/p>\n

Signatories of the letter, titled the Voyager Declaration<\/a>, urge the U.S. leadership not to implement “harmful” cuts and dispute “non-strategic staffing reductions,” curtailing research projects, as well as cancelling contracts and participation in international missions or assignments for which Congress has already appropriated funding. It’s no small list of objections raised at a time of broader uncertainty at NASA, which faces significant \u2014 and long chronicled \u2014 declines in funding and staff, amid a broader White House push to shrink down the federal workforce.<\/p>\n

“NASA will never compromise on safety. Any reductions\u2014including our current voluntary reduction\u2014will be designed to protect safety-critical roles,” NASA Spokesperson Bethany Stevens said in an emailed statement. “The reality is that President Trump has proposed billions of dollars for NASA science, demonstrating an ongoing commitment to communicating our scientific achievements. To ensure NASA delivers for the American people, we are continually evaluating mission lifecycles, not on sustaining outdated or lower-priority missions.”<\/p>\n

Adding to the tumult, NASA on Monday announced<\/a> the high-level exit of Makenzie Lystrup, who will end her two-year stint as Goddard Space Flight Center director on Aug. 1. NASA says the step was communicated internally before any knowledge of the letter. It’s not the first loss from the agency’s senior ranks in recent months:\u00a0 Laurie Leshin stepped down<\/a> from the director post of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in June.\u00a0 And more exits could be forthcoming: at the start of the month, Politico reported<\/a> that at least 2,145 senior-level employees could depart NASA, many serving in core mission sets.<\/p>\n

Throughout, NASA \u2014 notable for both its own achievements and its substantial contracts to the U.S. private space industry \u2014 has remained without long-term leadership, after U.S. President Donald Trump’s initial pick, tech billionaire and Elon Musk ally Jared Isaacman, was unexpectedly removed from consideration back in May. Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, was appointed to hold up the fort as NASA’s interim administrator just this month.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, there’s money on the line.\u00a0 NASA clinched a budget of $24.875 billion last year \u2014 8.5% under its initial request and 2% below the funding of 2023 \u2014 that was matched in 2025. Under the Trump administration, the agency battled the possibility of a roughly 25% budget trim in 2026, although the U.S. House of Appropriations subcommittee has pushed back on these cuts. If enacted, the Trump funding proposal of $18.8 billion would have been the smallest NASA budget since before the U.S.’ first crewed Moon landing via the Apollo 11 mission, commemorated this week on July 20.<\/p>\n

In a Monday statement, Trump said his administration is “building on the legacy of Apollo 11” and endorsed NASA’s initiatives focused on “returning Americans to the Moon \u2014this time to stay \u2014 and putting the first boots on Mars.” Colonizing the red planet has been a vocally stated objective of the U.S. president since his January return to office, echoing the ambitions of his then-ally Musk. The two have since parted ways through an explosive rift, but the dream to land U.S. astronauts on the Moon and Mars has gripped the nation, with a respective 67% and 65% of those surveyed in a CBS News\/YouGov poll<\/a>v now in favor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What’s upIllegal to implement NASA cuts before Congress gives green light to budget: Democrats \u2014 Democrats on a House committee overlooking NASA’s budget have written a letter to Sean Duffy, the space agency’s new acting administrator, saying it would be “flatly illegal” to proceed with structure and workforce changes before NASA’s budget has been passed through Congress. \u2014\u00a0Reuters<\/a>South Korea seeks to build a lunar base by 2045\u00a0\u2014 South Korea is looking to build a moon base within the next 20 years under the country’s new long-term national space exploration roadmap, the Korea AeroSpace Administration said. Seoul also intends to develop a next-generation lunar lander by 2040. \u2014\u00a0Yonhap<\/a>UK can make ‘major contribution’ to space sustainability, report says \u2014 Armed with significant investment and government support, the U.K. could become a “responsible, intelligent and independent leader” in space sustainability, a new report found, noting the country’s opportunities in space manufacturing, drug-making and stem cell harvest. \u2014\u00a0Physics World<\/a>How Star Trek helped name NASA’s space shuttles \u2014 NASA’s first space shuttle, dubbed Enterprise, was initially supposed to be called Constitution, before Star Trek fans intervened. \u2014\u00a0BBC Future<\/a>Orius builds gravity simulator to examine plant growth \u2014 French firm Orius has constructed Gravilab, a gravity simulator with two rotating axes, which will investigate how certain gravity environments impact plant growth. \u2014\u00a0Hortidaily<\/a>Most Americans favor going to Mars, poll finds \u2014 A CBS News\/YouGov poll has uncovered that 65% of Americans support the idea of U.S. astronauts going to Mars, while two thirds of those surveyed also back sending U.S. cosmonauts to explore the Moon again. \u2014\u00a0CBS News<\/a>Industry maneuversLinde to ramp up\u00a0 U.S. air gas capacity to serve space sector \u2014 Industrial gas supplier Linde will build a new air separation unit in Texas to increase its capacity and support the U.S. space industry, in line with two agreements to supply liquid oxygen and nitrogen for rocket take-offs. \u2014\u00a0Gas World<\/a>Golden Dome chief outlines steps to deliver system \u2014 General Michael Guetlein has laid out the plans to bring about the U.S.’ ambitious Golden Dome missile intercepting system within three years. \u2014 Space News<\/a>Market moversRocket Lab stock rally continues \u2014 Rocket Lab’s U.S.-listed stock gained further ground, with Bank of America and Citi penning high price targets amid favorable aerospace and defense sector market conditions. \u2014\u00a0AInvest<\/a>ArianeGroup, Nikon to back production of ultra-large-scale components \u2014 ArianeGroup and 3D metal printer manufacturer Nikon have partnered up to support output of ultra-large-scale components above 1 cubic meter through additive manufacturing. \u2014\u00a0Nikon<\/a>SpaceX plans to detonate rockets over Hawaii’s waters\u00a0\u2014 The Federal Aviation Administration has given Elon Musk’s SpaceX permission to detonate rocket ships over the protected waters of the Mokumanamana island, which is holy to indigenous people, The Guardian reports \u2014\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>On the horizonJuly 25 \u2014 Russia’s Roscosmos to launch Soyuz 2.1b\/Fregat-M out of Siberia, carrying two satellites for the Ionosfera constellationJuly 25 \u2014 Arianespace’s Vega-C to take off with CO3D quartet of Earth observations satellites out of the French GuianaJuly 26 \u2014 Gilmour Space’s Eris to launch on test flight out of QueenslandJuly 27 \u2014 China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation’s Long March 6 to take off out of XinzhouJuly 30 \u2014 The Indian Space Research Organisation’s GSLV-F16 will depart with the ISRO-NASA joint satellite, NISAR, out of Sriharikota<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CNBC’s Investing in Space newsletter offers a\u00a0view into the business of space exploration and privatization, delivered straight to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[7796,273,90,416,14348,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-22346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-breaking-news-technology","9":"tag-business-news","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space","12":"tag-space-industry","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}