You possibly can add one other title to the 1000’s of staff leaving NASA because the Trump administration primes the house company for a 25 p.c finances minimize.
On Monday, NASA introduced that Makenzie Lystrup will go away her publish as director of the Goddard House Flight Heart on Friday, August 1. Lystrup has held the highest job at Goddard since April 2023, overseeing a employees of greater than 8,000 civil servants and contractor staff and a finances final yr of about $4.7 billion.
These figures make Goddard the most important of NASA’s 10 discipline facilities primarily dedicated to scientific analysis and improvement of robotic house missions, with a finances and workforce akin to NASA’s human spaceflight facilities in Texas, Florida, and Alabama. Officers at Goddard handle the James Webb and Hubble telescopes in house, and Goddard engineers are assembling the Nancy Grace Roman House Telescope, one other flagship observatory scheduled for launch late subsequent yr.
“We’re grateful to Makenzie for her management at NASA Goddard for greater than two years, together with her work to encourage a Golden Age of explorers, scientists, and engineers,” Vanessa Wyche, NASA’s performing affiliate administrator, stated in a press release.
Cynthia Simmons, Goddard’s deputy director, will take over as performing chief on the house heart. Simmons began work at Goddard as a contract engineer 25 years in the past.
Lystrup got here to NASA from Ball Aerospace, now a part of BAE Programs, the place she managed the corporate’s work on civilian house tasks for NASA and different federal businesses. Earlier than becoming a member of Ball Aerospace, Lystrup earned a doctorate in astrophysics from College Faculty London and performed analysis as a planetary astronomer.
Makenzie Lystrup at a panel dialogue with company heart administrators on the 2024 Artemis Suppliers Convention in Washington, DC.Courtesy of Joel Kowsky/Nasa
Formal Dissent
The announcement of Lystrup’s departure from Goddard got here hours after the discharge of an open letter to NASA’s interim administrator, transportation secretary Sean Duffy, signed by tons of of present and former company staff. The letter, titled the “The Voyager Declaration,” identifies what the signatories name “latest insurance policies which have or threaten to waste public assets, compromise human security, weaken nationwide safety, and undermine the core NASA mission.”
“Main programmatic shifts at NASA should be carried out strategically in order that dangers are managed fastidiously,” the letter reads. “As a substitute, the final six months have seen fast and wasteful modifications which have undermined our mission and prompted catastrophic impacts on NASA’s workforce. We’re compelled to talk up when our management prioritizes political momentum over human security, scientific development, and environment friendly use of public assets.”
The letter is modeled on related paperwork of dissent penned by staff protesting cuts and coverage modifications on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and the Environmental Safety Company.
