Workforce cuts are putting NASA’s plans to send astronauts to the moon and, eventually, Mars, at risk, according to a new audit from the government’s top watchdog.
NASA shed 4,000 of its permanent staff last year, an overhaul officials said is now impacting 70% of its major projects. The agency has felt the cuts throughout its headquarters and in each of its centers across the country, the Government Accountability Office found in a report released on Thursday.
The Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland was the hardest hit, shedding more than one-third of its workforce through a hiring freeze and various separation incentives, followed by the Langley Research Center in Virginia and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, operated by the California Institute of Technology, also laid off 10% of its workforce.
“The civil servant departures have left NASA’s workforce out of balance with NASA’s programmatic needs,” GAO said.
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Staff working on 25 of NASA’s 36 major projects told the watchdog they were suffering ill effects from the workforce cuts.
The Space Launch System, the vehicle for launching the Artemis missions, lost 20% of its civilian workforce. The program is still analyzing the impacts of those losses but considers staffing issues as a possible risk to future Artemis missions. Artemis II sent four crew members around the moon earlier this year. Artemis III is set to serve as another test run next year before Artemis IV’s planned landing on the moon in 2028.
The Orion program, which provides the spacecraft used by the Artemis missions, shed 10% of its civil servants and has struggled to backfill “key positions.” Projects related to Artemis reported technical and programmatic risks that “were likely to delay their schedules” going forward, GAO said.
Layoffs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory hit both leadership and “hands-on hardware” development staff in the Near Earth Object Surveyor project, a planned infrared space telescope that will detect asteroids and comets that threaten Earth. A program designed to study Venus’ atmosphere lost so many program managers and engineers that it canceled various risk-reduction activities last year, but it has since sought to restore staffing.
Most of NASA’s major projects still made it through 2025 without significant schedule delays or cost overruns, GAO found, though more challenges may be on the horizon.
“Moving forward, some centers may be challenged to meet the workforce needs of the mission directorates because of the reduced civil servant workforce,” GAO said. “Some centers, particularly those that encountered large workforce losses, may not be able to adequately staff all planned work.”
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and pilot who previously led several SpaceX missions, has put NASA on a different trajectory since taking office in December. He announced earlier this year that the agency would resume hiring after an extended freeze and address skill gaps.
The agency recently launched NASA Force with the Office of Personnel Management to recruit technical employees to key roles in two-year stints, which could be converted to permanent roles.
OPM Director Scott Kupor recently told NOTUS that NASA would look to fill many roles that had been outsourced to contractors with government staff.
In response to its report, Isaacman told GAO that NASA encountered “many challenges” in 2025, including the “departure of over 4,000 civil servants.”
“I commend the NASA workforce advancing the major programs and projects included in this year’s assessment — people who were able to adjust and respond in creative ways to continue their missions,” Isaacman said.
The administrator’s push to restaff the space agency could run into further resistance if the Trump administration has its way: The president’s fiscal 2027 budget proposed slashing NASA’s budget by 23%. President Donald Trump similarly suggested a $6 billion, or 24%, funding cut, the elimination of 19 projects and a 32% workforce reduction in fiscal 2026, though Congress largely ignored those proposals and kept the agency flat funded.
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