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An office in an obscure corner of the federal government that NASA has relied on to safely land astronauts on the moon and robotic probes on Mars is facing pressure to cut its tight-knit team of experts by at least 20 percent, according to two people familiar with the mandate.<\/p>\n
The thinning of the staff has already started at the Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Ariz., the people said, the result of an assortment of voluntary resignation offers put forward by the Department of Government Efficiency, led by the billionaire Elon Musk. More employees are expected to be laid off in the coming weeks, following a new open call for early retirements and resignations on April 4. The office, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey under the Department of the Interior, has been subject to the cost-cutting efforts initiated in a mass email that Mr. Musk\u2019s team sent across the federal government in January.<\/p>\n
Representatives for the Interior Department, the U.S.G.S. and the astrogeology center did not reply to requests for comment on the staff reductions or their potential ramifications.<\/p>\n
The cuts could affect crewed missions to Mars in the future, a key goal of Mr. Musk, who founded SpaceX. He has said he conceived of the company to make human life multiplanetary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Matthew Golombek, a geophysicist at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has worked on the selection of landing sites for multiple probes to Mars, described the Astrogeology Science Center\u2019s precision mapping as \u201cthe gold standard that basically everyone in the community uses.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the start of the year, the office had 53 employees. Eight are already set to leave, with more encouraged to consider the latest offer.<\/p>\n
Its experts have been relied on \u201cfor just about all the landing-site selections, because of the excellence of their mapping,\u201d Dr. Golombek said. Cuts to the center\u2019s \u201ccadre of incredibly experienced and knowledgeable people,\u201d he added, would lead to \u201cworse products to go by.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any consequences of downsizing the office\u2019s team of interplanetary mapmakers could be significant: President Trump\u2019s nominee to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman, told a Senate committee on Wednesday that he would propose \u201cparalleling\u201d efforts to send astronauts to Mars alongside existing plans to send crewed missions to the moon.<\/p>\n
One researcher in the Flagstaff office, which is known simply as \u201cAstro\u201d among many experts in the field, worried that personnel lost amid these shifting budget priorities could prove fatal to critical projects in mapping and planetary science, including the identification of hidden water-ice deposits on Mars that would prove invaluable to human exploration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t imagine taking 10 people at random out of the 40-something who are left and there not being whole projects that would just have to get canceled,\u201d the researcher said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Even the departure of just five workers, depending on their seniority or areas of expertise, the researcher added, would leave the office in big trouble.<\/p>\n
The two employees, who requested anonymity to protect their careers in government, became familiar with this latest call for volunteers to the \u201cdeferred resignation\/retirement program\u201d during recent staff meetings. Mandatory layoffs, known in the federal government as reductions in force, could follow, one of these employees said, if not enough employees volunteer.<\/p>\n
The field of astrogeology is interdisciplinary, with experts in terrestrial fields like mineralogy, volcanology and geography in the service of space exploration. Although the U.S.G.S. astrogeology center is part of the Interior Department, it works very closely with NASA and is \u201calmost entirely funded by NASA,\u201d according to one recent budget document. Over the decades, the center\u2019s experts have taken a lead role in generating detailed topographical maps of Mars, the moon and other worlds as well as strategic plans and scientific goals for generations of NASA missions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Its scientists also taught crash courses in lunar geology to the Apollo astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, to better inform their collecting of rock samples. The training has been revived for NASA\u2019s Artemis program, which plans to return astronauts to the moon\u2019s surface as soon as 2027.<\/p>\n
The office\u2019s geology experts raced to help NASA find new landing sites for the first of its two historic Viking Mars landers in 1976 after an original site was found to be too dangerous. In 2021, the Perseverance rover used the center\u2019s maps and software to autonomously guide itself safely to the Martian surface.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerseverance was the first rover, and lander, to have onboard maps actually created by the U.S.G.S. folks,\u201d said Christopher Edwards, a professor of planetary science at Northern Arizona University, which is a few miles south of Astro\u2019s offices in Flagstaff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019d create these hazard maps, and as the rover was descending it would actually be doing a real-time matching with maps onboard,\u201d Dr. Edwards said. \u201cYou know, \u2018Oh, hey! This is a safe place to land! This is not a safe place to land!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Companies that are part of the booming commercial space sector have also relied on the expertise of the Astrogeology Science Center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cSpaceX would sometimes call U.S.G.S. with questions, and the folks at U.S.G.S. were quite excited,\u201d said David S. F. Portree, a former archivist and public information manager with the Astrogeology Science Center who is now a semiretired historian and science writer in Arizona. Mr. Portree recalled multiple occasions in which the office did work for the firm.<\/p>\n
One project, described by a current Astrogeology staff member, involved helping SpaceX assess whether the company could land its Dragon space capsule on land within the continental United States. (SpaceX ultimately opted for water landings.)<\/p>\n
SpaceX did not reply to a request for comment on past or current work with the astrogeology center, or how it would affect the company\u2019s Mars plans.<\/p>\n
Mr. Portree \u2014 who wrote an official history of 50 years of planning by NASA for a crewed mission to Mars \u2014 said that he was worried that reductions in force would mean senior scientists wouldn\u2019t be able to pass on their often highly specialized expertise to the young researchers who could one day advance their field. That extends to the Trump administration\u2019s executive order for a governmentwide hiring freeze, which affected the office\u2019s student contractor programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has ripple effects well beyond Flagstaff, well beyond Astro,\u201d he continued. \u201cYou shut off the tap. You prevent the creation of the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Dr. Edwards, at Northern Arizona, said he was worried about the administration\u2019s push to fire new hires known as probationary workers en masse.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these temporary or provisional type positions, they\u2019re not just for young people,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cIt\u2019s just what you move into when you become a federal employee. They might actually be firing subject-matter experts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s crazy to me,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n