“Having served in a variety of science and aerospace civilian and government roles in her career, Makenzie has led development of, and/or contributed to, a variety of NASA’s priority science missions, including successful operations of our James Webb Space Telescope and Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, as well as development of the agency’s Roman Space Telescope, and more,” said Vanessa Wyche, acting associate administrator at NASA on Monday. But with Makenzie Lystrup’s departure as director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, uncertainty reaches far beyond one chief’s departure.
Goddard, located in Maryland and named after rocketing pioneer Robert Goddard, is more than another NASA center. It’s the location where the country has the most space scientists and engineers, having more than 8,000 employees and contractors. The technical scope of the center includes operations of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, testbed for the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and management of the Solar Dynamics Observatory and OSIRIS-REx, which just brought back asteroid samples to Earth. Its planetary science and Earth observation expertise has established it as a keystone for scientific research and mission-critical engineering.
Lystrup’s first few months on the job, starting in April 2023, were characterized by her strong scientific background she has a doctoral degree in astrophysics from University College London and has worked on research involving planetary atmospheres and magnetospheres utilizing ground- and space-based telescopes. Her leadership encompassed Goddard’s central campus, directing activities at the Wallops Flight Facility, the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation Facility, the White Sands Complex, and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. Her departure, hot on the heels of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Laurie Leshin’s resignation, is an era of extreme instability for the agency.
The background for such high-profile exits is a planned 2026 federal budget cutting NASA’s budget by almost 25%, cutting its budget from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion a figure when adjusted for inflation would represent NASA’s lowest budget since 1961 the lowest budget ever put forward for NASA since 1961. The science budget would be cut even deeper, falling by 47% to $3.9 billion. This would necessitate the cancellation of numerous missions, such as operational spacecraft Mars Odyssey, MAVEN, New Horizons, and Juno, and the Mars Sample Return mission potentially leaving behind precious Martian soil samples already recovered by Perseverance Mars Sample Return a mission to return Red Planet material already recovered by NASA’s Perseverance rover would be scrapped.
The proposed cuts would affect missions as well as the very nature of NASA’s workforce. The agency will need to cut its civil servants by 17,391 to 11,853, a reduction of 32% cut, the deepest one-year reduction in its history. Over 2,000 senior-level workers, including those with expertise and institutional knowledge, are anticipated to depart through buyouts, early retirements, or forced reductions that have sparked fears about a “brain drain” at the space agency. As Brittany Webster of the American Geophysical Union noted, We’re really kind of going back to the start of NASA with some of these levels. Many of these reductions, I think, trace their roots back before the start of the Space Age.
The engineering implications are extreme. Goddard crews manage the missions and ongoing operation of the missions such as the Hubble and JWST and soon the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The Roman Telescope, on the other hand, is its following giant leap for astrophysics in the sense that it can study dark energy and exoplanets, but next year’s budget for it has been cut below half of what originally NASA had wanted the next year’s budget request only provides $156.6 million for the construction of Roman next year short of half of what NASA initially had planned to provide. At the same time, climate-monitoring satellites like Terra, Aqua, and Aura, which give us precious climate data, are also being cut back.
Discontinuing such missions is not merely a delay of data gathering but a possible loss of leadership in space exploration internationally. As the Planetary Society cautioned, “The radical and rapid gutting of NASA’s resources will lead to reduced productivity, threaten institutional knowledge and create economic uncertainty in the American industrial base.” The agency’s Science Mission Directorate, with its fleet of observatories and planet probes, is under what one described as an extinction-level event for the space agency’s most productive, successful and broadly supported activity: science. The agency is displeased with the White House plan, labeling it an extinction-level event for the space agency’s most productive, successful and widely supported activity: science.
Cynthia Simmons, acting deputy director of Goddard, has been designated to act as director until the center gets through these issues. The leadership transition comes as Congress starts negotiating the appropriations bill, with the science and engineering community calling on lawmakers to stand firm against the cuts. Seven former directors of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate signed a letter cautioning against the long-term consequences, and the possible loss of human knowledge and inspiration should the cuts continue.
For Goddard’s thousands of scientists, engineers, and technicians, as well as across NASA, the coming months will shape not merely the fate of individual missions but the trajectory of American space science for a few years to come.
