NASA denies improper shuttering of Goddard facilities during shutdown

BALTIMORE — News that NASA federal employees had been called back to work at Maryland’s Goddard Space Flight Center to dismantle and move laboratories during the government shutdown drew a strong rebuke from members of Congress and a denial from NASA officials.

This is false,” NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens told The Baltimore Sun. “None of this is true.”

She said that a congressional letter giving Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy seven days to account for closing laboratories and mission-critical capabilities at Goddard during the shutdown was based on inaccurate information.

Sen. Zoey Lofgren, a California Democrat, and other members of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology signed the Nov. 10 letter accusing NASA of “haphazardly uprooting employees and millions (at least) of dollars of equipment without a destination or technical justification.”

Lofgren called for an investigation by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General into the center’s actions during the shutdown and demanded a full accounting of any damage done to Goddard facilities.

“The agency’s hastily planned moves and closures — some of which I understand are already well underway — risk causing significant delays for multi-billion-dollar missions under development,” the Nov. 10 letter states, “and could heighten the risk of mission failure altogether.

“I am hereby demanding that NASA immediately halt all building, laboratory, facility, and technical capability closure and relocation activities,” the letter continues, “and immediately cease the relocation, disposal, excessing, or repurposing of any specialized equipment or mission-related hardware and systems at Goddard.”

The Sun obtained copies from a 50-member Signal group chat, titled GSFC RIF Group, discussing the lab-closure activities, a general lack of maintenance and deterioration in existing facilities.

“Eight labs have been divested with no replacement,” one chat member states.

“The center has unilaterally decided these capabilities are no longer needed without any consultation with stakeholders,” another user wrote.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore spokesperson Ammar Moussa said the governor is deeply concerned by reports of illegal cuts and closures at NASA Goddard.

“Maryland is proud to host one of the nation’s leading centers for innovation and exploration, and these missions are vital to our state and our country,” the governor said in a statement emailed to The Sun. “We stand with our congressional delegation in demanding transparency and accountability to protect Goddard’s workforce and its critical scientific work.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said he would continue fighting to restore NASA funding stripped by the president’s 2026 budget request.

“I am pressing the administration for answers and looking closely into whether these actions violate the Antideficiency Act, in order to hold the Trump Administration accountable to the law,” he said.

The federal Antideficiency Act shuts the government down by prohibiting agencies from spending funds that have not been appropriated by Congress, according to the Government Accountability Office. Exceptions are provided for emergency and mission-critical activities, for NASA, which includes operating the International Space Station and other spacecraft in orbit, as well as ground-based facilities that require continuous monitoring.

Any employees authorized to come onto the campus were approved on a case-by-case basis by NASA lawyers, Stevens said.

Goddard’s website boasts the nation’s largest collection of scientists, engineers and technologists. At the beginning of this year, the center employed 10,000, including 3,000 civil servants. NASA lost 2,000 employees to federal buyouts this year, including 607 at Goddard, the news site SpacePolicy.com reports.

Goddard is home to the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes as well as the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. CNN reported that 13 buildings are being shuttered, nearly half of the 30 buildings on the 1,270-acre campus in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The lab moves and closures, first reported in Space.com were confirmed to The Sun by Goddard employees who asked that their names not be used for fear of retribution.

One lab built to develop an instrument for the planned Artemis 3 mission to the Moon was shut down, a Goddard astronomer said. Employees were told they would have to vacate their current location without a place to go.

“It’s amazingly bizarre,” the employee said. “Why are you damaging an instrument that’s in the Artemis plan and well on the way to being built?”

Cuts to NASA missions and personnel that NASA already enacted threaten America’s status as a leader in space, the employee said. Cutting smaller missions and cancelling new hires before they could come on board severely disrupts progress, he explained.

“We’re already at least a generation behind,” the employee continued. “You lose the current generation and you also have to build up the next generation at the same time. There’s no smaller missions to train people on. All we have now are big, expensive missions that cannot fail, so you can’t learn there. Small missions are where engineers and scientists get trained.”

U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, whose district includes Goddard, called allegations that the administration is disposing of NASA hardware “unsettling.”

“The bottom line is we need leadership that understands the great importance of the space research that Goddard has done over the years and continues to do now,” Ivey said.

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