Weeks after Trump administration officials announced that management of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory would open to competitive bidding for the first time, questions remain as to why Caltech could lose control of the lab its researchers founded in 1936.<\/p>\n
On one hand, observers note, high-profile delays and cost overruns on significant recent JPL projects earned sharp criticism from NASA even before the 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n
On the other, the second Trump administration\u2019s record of squeezing scientific funding and attacking institutions<\/a> in Democratic-led states make it difficult to consider any action as separate from the charged political atmosphere, analysts say.<\/p>\n \u201cMy first instinct is that this [competition] isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing. It\u2019s not written in stone that Caltech must run JPL, and it wouldn\u2019t be the worst thing to have some competition for running the place,\u201d said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the nonprofit Planetary Society.<\/p>\n \u201cThat said, that requires this contract evaluation to be fair and unbiased, and this administration has no credibility in such things,\u201d he added. \u201cThe responsibility is on NASA to earn the trust and ensure such an evaluation is open and free from political meddling. That\u2019s almost impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n JPL became part of NASA when the space agency was formed in 1958, and Caltech has been awarded the contract to run the institution outright ever since.<\/p>\n Its current 10-year contract with NASA, which is valued at up to $30 billion, runs through Sept. 30, 2028.<\/p>\n NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the competition on May 22 as part of a slate of sweeping organizational changes at the space agency.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you step back, it is worth considering how many additional missions we could have undertaken with the resources lost to program cancellations and cost overruns over the years,\u201d Isaacman wrote in a memo<\/a> to staff. \u201cThat is the problem we must fix, so the American taxpayer and space-loving community can receive the highest scientific return on every dollar we spend at NASA.\u201d<\/p>\n Allowing competition on the contract for JPL, the lone Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) in NASA\u2019s portfolio, was an effort to address cost-efficiency concerns, Isaacman wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cThis process will take several years, and I do not anticipate it having any impact on the projects underway or the location of the facilities,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt does, however, provide an opportunity to evaluate management costs, overhead burdens, and ideally find ways to get after the science faster and more affordably.\u201d<\/p>\n In a joint statement<\/a>, Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum and JPL Director Dave Gallagher said that the competition was \u201cno surprise\u201d and that a team was already in place \u201cto ensure we are positioned for success.\u201d<\/p>\n In July, NASA\u2019s Office of Procurement held an informational event<\/a> for companies and institutions interested in the upcoming FFRDC contract.<\/p>\n The dozens of registered attendees<\/a> included universities such as USC, Texas A&M and Georgia Tech; aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin; and nonprofit corporations like MITRE, which manages several FFRDCs, and Universities Space Research Assn., a university consortium founded by the National Academy of Sciences in 1969. (SpaceX, which has been awarded more than $13 billion in NASA contracts in the last decade, was not on the list.)<\/p>\n \u201cLockheed Martin has more than 50 years of deep space exploration success with JPL, supporting landmark missions to Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Pluto, including nearly a dozen missions to Mars,\u201d said Bob Behnken, vice president of exploration and technology strategy. \u201cWe look forward to building on that unmatched partnership in the years ahead. We are closely following NASA\u2019s review and will continue to assess how we can best contribute to the agency\u2019s mission.\u201d<\/p>\n Other attendees contacted by The Times declined to discuss their involvement.<\/p>\n Isaacman indicated that JPL could come under scrutiny even before he took over NASA. The billionaire entrepreneur referenced high costs at the La Ca\u00f1ada Flintridge institution in a memo<\/a> prepared in advance of his confirmation hearings on his priorities for the space agency.<\/p>\n \u201cContract structure: Very expensive,\u201d Isaacman wrote of JPL<\/a> in a table outlining organizational issues at each of NASA\u2019s centers. \u201cMust increase the output and \u2018time-to-science\u2019 KPI,\u201d or key performance indicator. <\/p>\n The institution has recently suffered a number of high-profile management stumbles<\/a>.<\/p>\n After the JPL-managed Psyche mission<\/a> to a metal-rich asteroid failed to meet its 2022 launch date, NASA commissioned an independent review that said internal reorganizations and personnel changes created distracted and uninformed managers and burned-out, stretched-thin staffers.<\/p>\n After a 2023 independent review<\/a> found there was \u201cnear zero probability\u201d of the JPL-managed Mars Sample Return mission making its proposed 2028 launch date, and \u201cno credible\u201d way to bring rocks back from the Red Planet within the stated budget, Isaacman\u2019s predecessor, Bill Nelson, put out a call<\/a> for proposals to industry and all other NASA centers, forcing JPL to compete for its own project.<\/p>\n After Trump\u2019s election, Nelson announced that the final decision<\/a> would be in the next administration\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n The White House pushed for massive cuts to NASA\u2019s 2026 budget that Congress overturned, and has lobbied for similarly steep cuts<\/a> again this year. JPL has instituted painful cost-cutting measures of its own, reducing staffing<\/a> from roughly 6,500 employees in 2023 to 4,500 last year through layoffs and attrition.<\/p>\n Its struggles come at a point when NASA is enthusiastically embracing private industry. Last month the agency awarded several key contracts<\/a> for its upcoming lunar missions to Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin and other private companies.<\/p>\n