A high NASA official is among thousands of employees who leave the agency

You can add Another name for the thousands of employees who leave NASA while the Trump administration is preparing the space agency for a budget cut by 25 %.

On Monday, NASA has announced that Makenzie Lystrup will leave her assignment as director of the Goddard Space Flight Center on Friday 1 August. Lystrup has held the best work in Goddard from April 2023, supervising a staff of over 8,000 public employees and employees of contractors and a budget of last year of about $ 4.7 billion.

These figures make Goddard the largest of the 10 NASA field centers mainly dedicated to scientific research and development of robotic spatial missions, with a budget and workforce comparable to the human space flight centers of NASA in Texas, Florida and Alabama. Goddard officials manage James Webble and Hubble telescopes in space and Goddard engineers are assembling the spatial telescope Romance by Nancy Grace, another leading observatory scheduled for the launch at the end of next year.

“We are grateful to Makenzie for its leadership at NASA Goddard for more than two years, including her work to inspire an era of gold of explorers, scientists and engineers,” said Vanessa Wyche, associated administrator of acting of NASA, in a note.

Cynthia Simmons, deputy director of Goddard, will take over as head of acting at the Space Center. Simmons started working in Goddard as a contract engineer 25 years ago.

Lystrup came to NASA from Ball Aerospace, now part of Bae Systems, where he managed the company’s work on civil space projects for NASA and other federal agencies. Before joining Ball Aerospace, Lystrup achieved a doctorate in astrophysics at the University College London and conducted research as a planetary astronomer.

Makenzie Lystrup in a panel discussion with the directors of the agency centers at the Artemis Suppliers Conference in Washington, DC.For kind concession of Joel Kowsky/Nasa

Formal dissent

The announcement of Lystrup’s departure from Goddard came hours after the release of a Open letter to the provisional administrator of NASATransport secretary Sean Duffysigned by hundreds of current and ex -current employees. The letter, entitled “The Voyager declaration”, identifies what the signatories call “recent policies that have or threaten to waste public resources, compromise human security, weaken national security and undermine the basic mission of NASA”.

“The main programmatic changes at NASA must be strategically implemented so that the risks are carefully managed,” reads the letter. “Instead, the last six months have seen quick and expensive changes that have undermined our mission and have caused catastrophic impacts on NASA workforce. We are forced to speak when our leadership gives priority at the political moment for human security, scientific progress and efficient use of public resources.”

The letter is modeled on similar documents of dissent written by employees who protest with cuts and political changes at the National Health Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency.