A whole lot of staff at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) might be affected by funds constraints looming over the area company for the present yr, with Congress nonetheless behind on issuing the ultimate funds for 2024 and its ultimate resolution relating to Mars Pattern Return (MSR).
In a statement issued on Tuesday, JPL introduced that it’s going to layoff 530 staff, or round 8% of the JPL workforce, in addition to 40 contractors, in its newest effort to cut back spending.
The choice has been months within the making because the area company fears federal funds cuts to its general spending for the yr forward. In January, JPL issued a hiring freeze and laid off 100 contractors because it braced itself for the brand new funds. On the identical time, NASA paused work on the Mars Pattern Return’s Seize, Containment and Return System, a vital facet of the MSR program, anticipating that its bold mission will obtain lower than one-third of the requested funding.
“Whereas we nonetheless shouldn’t have an FY24 appropriation or the ultimate phrase from Congress on our Mars Pattern Return (MSR) funds allocation, we are actually ready the place we should take additional important motion to cut back our spending,” JPL Director Laurie Leshin wrote in a memo to JPL staff.
In March, NASA requested $27.2 billion for its 2024 budget, a 7% enhance from 2023. Just a few months later, nonetheless, a deficit discount laws went into impact, posing a menace to the area company’s funds request. On high of that, NASA had come underneath heavy scrutiny for having unrealistic price and timeline expectations for MSR.
NASA had requested $949.3 million for MSR in its budget proposal for 2024, however it’s going to probably obtain $300 million. That’s 36% of the $822-million funds the mission acquired in 2023, an indication that the Senate Appropriations subcommittee accountable for overseeing NASA’s funds is clamping down on the area company’s overly bold targets of launching a lander and orbiter to Mars in 2028.
In its proposed 2024 funds for NASA, the Senate Appropriations subcommittee directed the space agency to submit a year-by-year funding profile for MSR inside the $5.3 billion lifecycle price outlined within the 2022 planetary science Decadal Survey. If NASA is unable to take action, it may face mission cancellation, the subcommittee wrote in a report issued in July.
Though we’re nicely into 2024, NASA has but to obtain a ultimate funds for the yr, and there was no ultimate resolution made by Congress relating to MSR. The area company, nonetheless, fears that it’ll be unhealthy information and is due to this fact doing what it will possibly now to cut back its spending because it awaits ultimate phrase.
NASA has already made some cuts to its authentic funds request for 2024, specifically suspending work on the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, a gaggle of satellites designed to review Earth’s higher ambiance. Different missions have additionally suffered on account of budgeting issues at JPL, corresponding to NASA’s VERITAS mission to Venus, which was delayed indefinitely.
“So within the absence of an appropriation, and as a lot as we want we didn’t must take this motion, we should now transfer ahead to guard towards even deeper cuts later had been we to attend,” Leshin wrote within the worker memo.
Correction: An earlier model of this text incorrectly acknowledged that NASA initiated the layoffs, when the truth is is was JPL saying the layoffs. As a federally funded analysis and growth middle, JPL is managed by Caltech, and its staff work for Caltech. Whereas JPL is part of Caltech, its major goal and actions are centered round varied area missions for NASA.
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