RIF Watch By the end of today, NASAs workforce will be about 10 percent smaller A dark and painful day at a space agency that brings so much light and joy to the world. Eric Berger Feb 18, 2025 9:52 am | 151 In this illustration, NASAs OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collects a sample from the asteroid Bennu. The agency's superpower is its capacity to dazzle us. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona In this illustration, NASAs OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collects a sample from the asteroid Bennu. The agency's superpower is its capacity to dazzle us. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreSpread across NASA's headquarters and 10 field centers, which dot the United States from sea to sea, the space agency has had a workforce of nearly 18,000 civil servants.However, by the end of today, that number will have shrunk by about 10 percent since the beginning of the second Trump administration four weeks ago. And the world's preeminent space agency may still face significant additional cuts.According to sources, about 750 employees at NASA accepted the "fork in the road" offer to take deferred resignation from the space agency later this year. This sounds like a lot of people, but generally about 1,000 people leave the agency every year, so effectively, many of these people might just be getting paid to leave jobs they were already planning to exit from.The culling of "probationary" employees will be more impactful. As it has done at other federal agencies, the Trump administration is generally firing federal employees who are in the "probationary" period of their employment, which includes new hires within the last one or two years or long-time employees who have moved into or been promoted into a new position. About 1,000 or slightly more employees at NASA were impacted by these cuts.Adding up the deferred resignations and probationary cuts, the Trump White House has now trimmed about 10 percent of the agency's workforce.However, the cuts may not stop there. Two sources told Ars that directors at the agency's field centers have been told to prepare options for a "significant" reduction in force in the coming months. The scope of these cuts has not been defined, and it's possible they may not even happen, given that the White House must negotiate budgets for NASA and other agencies with the US Congress. But this directive for further reductions in force casts more uncertainty on an already demoralized workforce and signals that the Trump administration would like to make further cuts.An awful weekJob losses are always terrible. This will be a dark and painful day at a space agency that brings so much light and joy to the world. Many of the probationary employees are just starting out their careers and were likely thrilled to land a job at NASA to explore the universe. And then all of that youthful energy and hope was extinguished this week.It's possible to view these losses through a couple of lenses.Yes, NASA is clearly losing some capability with these latest cuts. Many of these hires were likely being counted on to bring new energy into the space agency and become its future discoverers and leaders. And their jobs are being sacrificed for no clear purpose. Is it to increase funding for the military? Is it to pay for tax cuts for the rich? There is a lot of anger that the relatively thin budget line of NASAless than one-half of 1 percent of the federal budgetis being sliced for such purposes.There is also frustration at the indiscriminate nature of the cuts. The Trump White House and the Department of Government Efficiency, spearheaded by Elon Musk, have taken a meat-cleaver approach by firing a lot of people at the same time, and probably not the right people, through a messy and painful process. This is not dissimilar to job cuts during corporate mergers or bankruptcies. It's the fastest possible way to make cuts. There is no empathy, and it is a brutal process.Are cuts needed?It is also clear that, as within other federal agencies, there is significant "bloat" in NASA's budget. In some areas, this is plain to see, with the space agency having spent in excess of $3 billion a year over the last decade "developing" a heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System, which used components from the Space Shuttle and costs an extraordinary amount of money to fly. In the meantime, the private launch industry has been running circles around NASA. Similarly, consider the Orion spacecraft. This program is now two decades old, at a cost of $1 billion a year, and the vehicle has never flown humans into space.One could go on. Much of the space community has been puzzled as to why NASA has been spending on the order of half a billion dollars to develop a Lunar Gateway in an odd orbit around the Moon. It remains years away from launching, and if it ever does fly, it would increase the energy needed to reach the surface of the Moon. The reason, according to multiple sources at the agency when the Gateway was conceived, is that the lunar space station would offer jobs to the current flight controllers operating the International Space Station, which is due to retire in 2030.In recent years, NASA has been in the midst of a difficult transition. The agency deserves a lot of credit for nurturing a commercial space industry that now is the envy of the world. But as part of this, NASA has been moving away from owning and operating its rockets, spacecraft, and other hardware and buying services from this commercial space industry. This transition from traditional space to commercial space marks an important step for NASA to remain on the cutting edge of exploration and science rather than trying to compete with US industry.But it is also a painful step.The key is ensuring that any future cuts at NASA are not indiscriminate. If and when Jared Isaacman is confirmed by the US Senate as the next NASA administrator, it will be up to him and his team to make the programmatic decisions about which parts of the agency are carrying their weight and which are being carried, which investments carry NASA into the future, and which ones drag it into the past. If these future cuts are smart and position NASA for the future, this could all be worth it. If not, then the beloved agency that dares to explore may never recover.Eric BergerSenior Space EditorEric BergerSenior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 151 Comments