Trump administration to lay off over 2,000 high-ranking Nasa employees: Report

The Trump administration is planning to lay off at least 2,145 Nasa high-ranking employees as the US government pushes for more budget cuts across various departments and slashes the size of federal agencies.

Most of the employees whose jobs have been taken away in the latest wave of layoffs are in senior-level government ranks with specialised skills or management responsibilities, according to a report by Politico. The move is expected to deprive the space agency of decades of experience.

Documents obtained by the news outlet reveal that at least 1,818 of the staff who are to be laid off are currently employed in core mission areas, like science or human space flight, while others serve in mission support roles, including information technology.

When asked about the proposed job cuts, Nasa spokesperson Bethany Stevens told Reuters, “Nasa remains committed to our mission as we work within a more prioritised budget.”

Since Trump returned to office in January, the US space sector and Nasa’s 18,000 employees have faced mounting uncertainty, as widespread layoffs and deep budget cuts proposed for the 2026 fiscal year threaten to dismantle dozens of scientific initiatives.

Nasa’s former heads write to Congress

Last week, ex-employees of Nasa, who have served as heads of departments in the space agency, wrote a letter to the US Congress, condemning the White House’s move to cut 47 per cent of its budget for science activities.

In the letter, the former employees called on the House appropriations committee “to preserve US leadership in space exploration and reject the unprecedented cuts to space science concocted by the White House’s Budget Director, Russ Vought”.

The letter said, “The economics of these proposed cuts ignore a fundamental truth: investments in NASA science have been and are a powerful driver of the U.S. economy and technological leadership.”

“n our former roles leading NASA’s space science enterprise, we consistently saw skilled teams innovate in the face of seemingly impossible goals, including landing a car-sized rover on Mars with pinpoint precision, build a massive telescope that can unfold in the vacuum of space to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos, design and operate a spacecraft hardy enough to survive temperatures of many thousands of degrees at the Sun, inspiring young and old alike worldwide by the stunning images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and pioneering the use of small satellites for science,” it added.

They also emphasised that the budget cuts threaten Nasa’s work to that of China, which is expanding its space programme aggressively. “Global space competition extends far past Moon and Mars exploration. The Chinese space science program is aggressive, ambitious, and well-funded. It is proposing missions to return samples from Mars, explore Neptune, monitor climate change for the benefit of the Chinese industry and population, and peer into the universe – all activities that the FY 2026 NASA budget proposal indicates the US will abandon,” they said.