Departure of Key Personnel Amidst Uncertainty at NASA

Not long prior to his decision to leave NASA, Steve Rader, an engineer with a 36 - year tenure at the Johnson Space Center, organized a retreat for department leaders at his downtown Houston residence. The preceding few months had been arduous for Rader and his team. In a recent phone conversation, he remarked, "I will say, I don't cry frequently." However, this changed following Trump's assumption of office. "You can ask my wife; during the first few months, I did cry."

Rader, having dedicated decades to projects such as the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, had been leading an open - innovation office at NASA since 2021. This office was tasked with integrating external ideas and talent into the agency. Yet, in the early days of Elon Musk's Department of Government Affairs (DOGE), the atmosphere within NASA was thick with despondency and paranoia. Everyone was contemplating departure, either fearing dismissal or both. "It was chaotic," Rader stated. "Daily, someone new would say, 'Oh, just message me on Signal.' It became the de facto communication method."

By the time Rader met with his leaders last winter, an email had been circulated offering over 2 million federal employees, including those at NASA, the option to resign while still receiving pay until September. Rumors were rife that the president intended to impose substantial cuts to NASA's budget. Simultaneously, at work, no one was openly discussing their plans. "I think leaders, in particular, didn't want to influence others to leave," Rader said.

What transpired next was astonishing. There were 10 individuals at Rader's apartment, whom he described as "the hardcore NASA people" - highly qualified, highly motivated leaders who could work anywhere for nearly any salary but chose the federal government. Right at the start of the meeting, half of them announced their departure. Some, like Rader, were nearing retirement, while others were much younger, part of what should have been the next generation of NASA leadership. "One of them, along with her family, is moving to Costa Rica," Rader said. "That's how terrified she is of the current situation."

As winter progressed, more and more top officials left the agency. "Many tried to hold on for a long time, but most have now gone," Rader said. Eventually, Rader himself decided to retire from NASA in February. He had been considering stepping down in the next couple of years, but the changes under Trump's new NASA expedited his decision. "Over the years, I've gotten to know people throughout the agency," he said. "And upon hearing these reports, I just didn't want to be a part of this."

Rader emphasizes that this is not a political issue, neither for him nor for the vast majority of his colleagues. Those who have worked at NASA for an extended period are accustomed to the ideological and priority shifts that occur with different administrations. However, this situation is of a different magnitude, unprecedented. "It was as if NASA was being deconstructed," Rader said. The American space agency, which sent humans to the moon, landed robots on Mars, and dispatched a probe past Jupiter into the Kuiper Belt and beyond, was being dismantled.

"It's deeply saddening and rather senseless," Rader said. "I think in a couple of years, perhaps less, they'll look back and think, 'Oh my gosh, what have we done?'"

No one interviewed for this piece believes NASA will cease to exist. Congress is pushing back against the changes, although the administration seems determined to implement them by any means. Instead, they envision a sort of rump agency. "The impression I got was that there was a real possibility NASA could be reduced to a mere name - only entity," Rader said. "Almost like a space - oriented version of the FAA (the Federal Aviation Administration)."

What is being undermined is not only NASA's technical ability to conduct missions, which would be bad enough, but also America's - and the world's - capacity to wonder, believe, and know. "It's almost as if we're diminishing our own vision and ambition, literally - not figuratively - closing our eyes to the cosmos and turning inwards," said Casey Dreier, the space policy chief at the nonprofit Planetary Society. "It's like witnessing the death of an ideal."

This decline is already in progress. Approximately 4,000 NASA staffers are scheduled to leave the agency this year, either through what the Trump administration terms "deferred resignation" - a form of delayed, voluntary layoff - or what NASA labels "normal attrition," which includes those like Rader who are leaving of their own accord. According to a Politico report, this represents about a quarter of the agency's total staff and includes over 2,000 senior leaders.

(In a statement, Cheryl Warner, NASA’s news chief, said safety “remains a top priority for our agency as we balance the need to become a more streamlined and more efficient organization and work to ensure we remain fully capable of pursuing a Golden Era of exploration and innovation, including to the moon and Mars.”)

Drastic Budget Cuts and Their Consequences

The administration has proposed a 2026 NASA budget that would slash overall agency spending by 24 percent and science spending specifically by nearly half. "This is the largest single - year cut as a percentage ever proposed to NASA," Dreier said. "It would bring NASA’s overall resources, adjusted for inflation, down to a level not seen since before the first humans went into space in 1961."

The Trump proposal projects a frozen NASA budget until at least 2030, despite the administration touting a new "golden age of innovation and exploration." To make matters worse, NASA has been without a full - time administrator - the agency's top official - since January. Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary and a former champion lumberjack and Real World cast member, has been serving in an interim capacity since July.

The proposed budget cuts and job losses would have far - reaching consequences for NASA. According to the Planetary Society, they would mean the end of 41 planned or current missions. These include an ambitious, long - ongoing plan to collect pristine soil samples on Mars and return them to Earth, a probe exploring the solar system beyond Pluto, and a lander set to capture and study a giant asteroid that will narrowly miss Earth in 2029. They would also force NASA to essentially abandon its climate - change - tracking efforts.

In a statement to WIRED, Duffy said, in part, that NASA "remains committed to (its) mission" and that the agency "retains a strong bench of talent … capable of executing upon my directives safely and in a timely manner."

However, few of his employees seem to believe this. In July, over 300 NASA staffers signed a public letter of dissent addressed to Duffy. Titled "The Voyager Declaration," the letter decried the "rapid and wasteful" changes of the past six months, which have "undermined (NASA’s) mission and caused catastrophic impacts on NASA's workforce."

The Symbolism and Global Impact of NASA Cuts

I have been writing about Trump since the 2016 Iowa Caucuses. I have grown accustomed to bad news - cruelty, incompetence, and needless suffering. I am aware that NASA cuts are not the worst thing occurring under his administration. (Foreign aid cuts could reignite the AIDS epidemic; children are being detained in immigration jails; Medicaid is at risk for millions.) However, slashing NASA seems to represent something different and more intangible. It is perhaps less an accumulation of new negativity than an absence not only of good but of the possibility of good.

As a non - American, what depresses me most is the apparent end of America's desire to look outward. One of the great joys of my life since the late days of the pandemic has been losing myself in the images captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Like many others, I was living what felt like a confined life back then. Everything seemed enclosed and fragmented. The highlight of my days was a solitary walk through empty streets. Launched at the end of 2021, James Webb seemed like a deliberate act of reaching out. It had an unapologetic, unqualified grandeur. It was proof that, together, we could still achieve extraordinary things.

I am not a science journalist, nor am I a dedicated space enthusiast. (I've always been a different kind of nerd, more into novels and tote bags than slide rules and telescopes.) But I have found something profoundly, gloriously human about the images from Webb. Every time a new batch is released, I find myself staring at them with something approaching spiritual awe. The Sombrero Galaxy, the Phoenix Cluster, the Cat's Paw Nebula - they all exist in these infinite, fathomless swirls, beautiful evidence that if we choose to, we can look and look forever and always discover something new.

This act of looking has allowed NASA to build itself into a globally recognized brand. "Not to over - emphasize the Make America Great logo," Rader told me. "But it is undeniable that, in the minds of many people worldwide, one of the things that makes America great is that we have and fund NASA." As a Canadian, I have a NASA Mars rover bumper sticker on my car. (Sorry, Canadian Space Agency.) According to Pew Research, 67 percent of Americans viewed NASA favorably in 2024, including 62 percent of Republicans. In terms of bipartisan approval, it ranks behind only the National Parks and the Postal Service.

I purchased that bumper sticker after watching - along with over 17 million others - NASA's Perseverance rover land on Mars in February 2021. Perseverance has been exploring the Jezero Crater, extracting soil samples in search of evidence of extraterrestrial life. The Trump administration, as part of a wholesale abandonment of the Mars Sample Return, wants to leave those samples on Mars. "The value of these samples, I think, is undeniable, and they are sitting there in tubes," Harry "Hap" McSween, who has spent decades working with NASA on Martian exploration, told me. "I'm trying not to be despondent, but it's difficult to see something I've worked so hard on being sidelined, at least, if not abandoned altogether."

There is a concern that the damage being inflicted, not only to the brand but to the actual agency, is irreversible. NASA is already losing its reputation as a place where brilliant minds can go, not for the sake of making the most money or obtaining the best stock options, but to work on unprecedented projects. Rader spent years perfecting the software for seamless data transfer between NASA teams on the ground and in space. In his final days at NASA, he had to comply with one of Trump's executive orders. "I had to go into my employees’ job descriptions and delete the words 'diversity' and 'inclusion,'" he said.

By and large, the scientists and senior leaders leaving NASA now - both voluntarily and involuntarily - are unlikely to return. They will move to the private sector or to other countries, taking with them what remains of America's dwindling capacity to inspire. "As a nation, we had built, and have built, something so unique in the course of history," Dreier said. "It's quite astonishing when you think about it - not just the level of ambition, but the willingness to say we're going to figure out what the universe looked like in its early years, or land a car - sized rover on Mars, or explore the farthest reaches of the solar system and beyond. And why? Not for domination or glory, but for this collective desire to better understand our cosmos."

One of my favorite images from the James Webb Space Telescope is of the Southern Ring Nebula. Released in the summer of 2022, the picture initially seems somewhat contained. It is an ocean - blue egg surrounded by halos of orange dust and gas. But upon zooming in, entire galaxies come into view: infinite pinpricks of light against a colossal orange cloud. In this picture, I see the best of what NASA was and the opposite of what it risks becoming. It represents an ambition that is both humble and boundless, rooted in the understanding that we can learn and see much, but we will never know everything. The universe is simply too vast.