Washington, DC—Something almost as strange as the discovery of dark matter itself happened outside the NASA headquarters building in Washington, DC on Monday morning. NASA scientists, engineers, technicians, and supporters protested ongoing government cutbacks outside their headquarters office in Washington, DC. They wanted to make the public aware of the impact that ongoing budget cuts and the spending bill would have on the U.S. space agency.
At 7 a.m., as civil servants were beginning their workday, dozens began arriving and stood for three hours with protest signs to tell the public they would no longer remain quiet about the budget cuts. One of the spokespersons of the group said the budget cuts are already being implemented despite Congress not having yet approved them.
The proposed budget cuts will reduce NASA staff by 25%, shut dozens of near earth, deep space, and earth research programs, both ongoing and in the planning stages at the space agency. The reductions in force would reduce staffing to 1960 levels at a time when NASA plans to begin its return to the moon with the Artemis lunar human project, while at the same time jump-starting its plans for human travel to Mars. These cuts would almost certainly lead to serious safety issues for those who embark on those missions, argued several authors who wrote a stinging analysis of the fiscal year 2026 budget cuts.
Almost all of those assembled declined to speak on the record about their disapproval and sense of betrayal over the cuts for fear of retribution. But scientists and engineers are typically some of the most unobtrusive and matter-of-fact thinking folks one is likely to meet, and to see them out on the street in front of their headquarters protesting the elected government leaders as well as the pressure coming from the White House through Doge, is striking.
There was plenty of evidence outside the NASA headquarters that there is already a struggle over what projects would be cut, as cuts are already underway as evidenced by the signs and faces of the scientists and engineers gathered on the sidewalk. NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro has bent to White House pressure before Congressional approval of the spending bill, and more cuts are likely to come for many of them, according to one of the speakers.
The NASA civil servants’ experience has been a story repeated throughout government since February, when the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s (Doge) scorched-earth policies first began at the Office of Personnel Management. Although a recent internal riff played out on social media between the Trump and Musk duo, Doge is still operating in agencies across the federal government. Doge personnel are still behind the pressure scheme to cull civil servants from the ranks of virtually every department and agency, except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a few other police agencies.
Comparatively, the budget bill has allocated an unprecedented increase of 265% to the current annual Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention budget, according to a report from the American Immigration Council. ICE will get $29.9 billion in funding for enforcement and deportation operations, increasing ICE’s annual budget three-fold. The budget will allocate $46.6 billion on border wall construction, a policy already proven to be a failure. These allocations blow past NASA’s annual budget, and produce no benefits to society, according to the teport.
NASA’s FY 2026 budget is only 0.3 % of entire U.S. discretionary spending, according to the 2026 NASA budget report.
The 70 or so NASA civil servants protesting on Monday still managed to lighten the sidewalk mood with an inflatable Pikachu dancing and waving at the passing traffic. Many drivers honked their approval as they drove past the protesters on their way to work. Some of the signs were couched in humor as well: “We don’t Even Know What Dark Matter Is Yet,” and “Stopping Climate Change Is Our Moonshot,” and “In Science We Trust.”
Marshall Finch, a contractor who spoke as an individual and stressed that he was not speaking on behalf of any government agency, said the cuts were already happening “because contractors were already being laid off while civil servants were given a deferred resignation offer.” He added that civil servants were “facing unusual pressure” to “strongly consider taking the resignation [offer] by the leadership.”
Monica Gorman, Lead Organizer, Goddard Engineers, Scientists, and Technicians Association (IFPTE Local 29) said, “In all these attacks, they’ve attacking science at NASA, NOAA, and in the Department of Health and Human Services. They’re attacking scientists and engineers and federal workers across the whole government.” She urged everyone to get involved by speaking to those they know to join and get involved in the fight against these attacks. “This is the biggest fight of our lives and we are all in it together in solidarity,” she said.
Budget for FY 2026 Will Break NASA
The proposed cuts at NASA will discard billions in taxpayer investments in deep space and near earth probes, helio (sun) projects, planetary exploration, and associated project equipment already operating in space. Terminating these programs is certain to end the U.S. standing as a leader in space exploration and technology development, which NASA has provided the nation and the world since its inception in 1958. It will mean that $12 billion already spent on existing space programs will be discarded, according to a published report.
The president’s discretionary budget request for 2026 contains a 26% reduction in funding for NASA as compared to 2025. It reduces NASA funding to $18.8 billion from $24.8 billion, the smallest NASA funding allocation since 1961, eight years before the U.S. put a human on the moon, and less than three years after NASA was created. It is the largest cut in terms of percentage of funding since NASA’s inception.
This means that many programs will be cut, including existing space programs, future space programs already under development, and outreach programs for high school and college students. Programs centered on earth studies to predict weather and advance the understanding of how the climate emergency impacts crop yields and weather will also see severe cuts. Many future programs that have received funding and are still in development are slated to be eliminated altogether, meaning that funding already allocated and spent on those projects will be wasted.
“We have seen the President’s budget request. If it is passed by Congress, then that will include cuts to satellites and probes already doing science in outer space,” said Finch.
A published story in The Space Review concluded that Trump’s NASA budget was “deeply flawed,” and summed it up with three words, “unprecedented, unstrategic, and wasteful.” The report further criticized the cuts for it’s deprivation of vital resource investment on the heels of the Artemis moon program and future plan to take humans to Mars, a time when funding should be increased, not decreased for those projects.
NASA STEM Programs Supporting Youth Intellectual Development Will Be Cut
A mother of one of the civil servants presently working at NASA spoke on behalf of her son, who always dreamed of working at NASA. “His job at NASA was like a dream come true. Like a lot of other NASA employees, his job is on the line. By defunding science and research, by defunding NASA, we are taking away our kids dreams and futures,” she said.
Another NASA employee who did not give their name said, “This administration said that NASA has no place doing engagement and outreach with learning. It’s critical for NASA to engage so we can inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, and professionals so NASA can solve the big problems like climate change and getting to Mars.”
One might argue conversely that if the same policy were applied to the Department of Defense, which incidentally spends tens of millions of dollars annually on advertising and recruitment outreach, the DoD would suffer the same fate as will certainly happen as the result of RIFs of NASA civil servants and RIFs at other agencies.
NASA Inspired Generations Towards Science
There are many stories about how NASA created synergy around interest in science and technology because NASA developed a grassroots interest and sense of pride in arcane subjects. NASA scientists and engineers showed others what could be. If one could dream something, then why not strive to make it come to be? Such was the idea presented by President John Kennedy in 1962 when he said “We chose to go to the moon,” before an audience at Rice University Stadium. The dream to walk on the moon took flight at that very moment. It came to be on July 19, 1969, just seven years later.
But it was not getting to the moon and walking on it that was the payoff. It was the impact of the technology development and advancement, scientific achievements and undertakings by civil servants dedicating themselves to novel ideas that propelled the country and the world forward.
Great advancements were achieved in computer hardware, software and interface with equipment as the result of NASA funding for development and applications, using existing science and understanding of materials.
The concept of ‘software engineering’ and the ‘software engineer’ came into the lexicon of science speak as the result of a software coder, a woman named Margaret Hamilton, whose team began writing the computer code in 1965 to help Apollo missions successfully reach the moon. She also developed the concept of programming code for a real-time recovery of a computer failure so it could self-reset its system when its code failed to properly calculate its position (known as an exception). She thought of the idea when her daughter was with her watching a simulation test run by astronauts practicing for a mission. In her curiosity, her daughter’s hand flipped one of the switches controlling the guidance system. Hamilton thought to herself, what if this happened in space? There would be no recovery. Thus her daughter was the impetus for creating a recoverable software solution.
This process saved the Apollo 11 crew from having to abort its moon landing when certain unplanned conditions overloaded the lunar module Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) with a “1202 alarm.” The ability of the AGC to reset its own code in real time with no adverse consequence to the lunar module orientation it was controlling, was a revolutionary advancement in computer science. The concept of computer code reset is one example of the many accomplishments—too many to note here—made by NASA scientists and engineers.
Some Of NASA’s Extraordinary Achievements
NASA innovation has transformed life as we know it. Its progress has resulted in technology development that has and will continue to benefit the public. NASA has listed the most recent product development of its technologies since 1976, and these are presented on a NASA website named Spinoff.
The NASA website notes, “When Congress created NASA, it mandated the agency disseminate its innovations as widely possible. To that end, the Technology Transfer Program was created in 1964, and it has functioned under various names ever since, making it NASA’s longest continuously-operated mission.”
The ability of NASA to lead in space exploration and achievement was made possible by the diligence of its civil servants and contractors. Some of its noteworthy achievements include:
The Apollo program which successfully landed four teams of two astronauts on the moon and successfully returned them to Earth between 1969 and 1972. Apollo 13, a mission which almost resulted in losing three astronauts in space, demonstrated that NASA was capable of rewriting the manual of a mission from the ground and returning a stricken spacecraft to Earth. It rewrote the process for redundancy and safety on space travel. Since 1972, no human has returned to the moon.
The Voyager inter-planetary space program, consisting of spacecraft Voyager I and II which were launched in 1977, is credited with being the first interstellar probes to exit the influence of the sun’s solar flux and leave the solar system in 2012. These missions continue returning data about the cosmic flux to Earth for scientific study. Voyager I has a gold-plated record attached to it with recorded music and greetings in languages from across the Earth.
The Perseverance Mars rover explorer landed on Mars in 2021 and included a payload of an operational laboratory, multiple cameras, sample tubes for later collection, and an autonomous, independent, unmanned autonomous vehicle helicopter, capable of flight in the thin atmosphere using its own computer guidance software program. The miniature helicopter named Ingenuity was self-charging, weighed about 4 pounds and flew 72 missions before a computer miscalculation resulted in a hard landing, it proved so successful that its mission was extended several times over. It was the first vehicle to independently fly on a planet other than Earth. On its underside was attached a small piece of cloth from the wing of the Wright brothers’ Flyer aircraft flown at Kitty Hawk in 1903.
Deep Cuts to NASA Are A Setback To Space Exploration And Technological Advances
The budget cuts to NASA would decimate not only scientific research and discoveries in space, it would have a significant impact on technological developments on Earth, according to a published report by Northeastern University. The extent of the budget cuts at NASA “[C]ould end up costing the U.S. more in the long run,” said Jacqueline McCleary, an assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University. McCleary said that decommissioning programs already underway creates additional costs. The programs cannot just be turned off.
The programs NASA has undertaken and completed have resulted in industries that have benefited everyone. GPS and cellular phones and communications are a few of the examples of how NASA has provided global benefits.
Jonathan Tuttle, a supporter of NASA, its scientists and engineers, summarized what was at stake: “Looking up to the stars and wondering what they are is something our ancestors have done ever since we gathered around campfires long before history began. NASA’s legacy is that it delivers the dream of flight to all of us. The warlords and petty tyrants don’t own the stars. We own the stars!”
