NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory laid off 100 contractors last week and warned that more layoffs may be coming as the facility braces for sharp federal budget cuts to a program aimed at bringing pieces of Mars to Earth.
In a Thursday email to employees, JPL director Laurie Leshin said NASA is expecting a budget that could limit Mars Sample Return spending to $300 million for the current fiscal year. That amounts to 36% of the $822 million spent in the previous year and well below the $949 million the Biden administration sought for the program.
A host of lawmakers, including Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, have criticized NASA for pulling back on the project before Congress has finalized its fiscal year 2024 appropriations process.
“This short-sighted and misguided decision by NASA will cost hundreds of jobs and a decade of lost science, and it flies in the face of Congressional authority,” Schiff said in November.
Leshin said adjusting to such a massive budget cut “will be painful.”
“It is also becoming more likely that there will be JPL workforce impacts in the form of layoffs, and the way such JPL workforce actions are implemented means that the impact would not be limited to MSR,” Leshin wrote.
Leshin could not be reached to comment on what JPL jobs are at risk of layoffs, or how many jobs might be lost.
In November, NASA announced it would slow down work on MSR because of sharp differences in proposed funding for the program in separate House and Senate bills. A House appropriations bill would provide the agency’s full request of $949.3 million, while the Senate version allocates only $300 million.
Schiff and other California lawmakers have called NASA’s decision “deeply short-sighted and misguided.”
NASA is operating under a continuing resolution until Feb. 2 that funds the agency at 2023 levels. But Sandra Connelly, the agency’s deputy associate administrator for science, warned there’s a potential danger there.
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