Author’s note: All individuals spoke in their individual capacity and did not speak on behalf of NASA.
Washington DC—When Neil Armstong said the moon landing was one small step for man, the world assumed he meant a step forward, but to the group outside NASA headquarters on September 15, the Trump administration was taking NASA a giant leap back.
Current and former NASA employees, contractors, and supporters founded the group ‘NASA Needs Help’ to expose the planned budget cuts to the agency. Although NASA Needs Help includes many NASA employees, they stressed that it wasn’t an “employee group trying to save jobs, it’s a NASA fan group trying to save NASA.” They rallied outside of the agency’s headquarters for roughly five hours to highlight the critical work at risk. All those in attendance did so on their own personal time, and spoke in their capacity as private citizens, not on behalf of NASA.
Nearly Every NASA Project Under Attack
Trump’s budget cuts would push NASA to its lowest funding levels since 1961, threatening the future of 41 key missions. These include climate monitoring, asteroid research, and the Mars Sample Return mission, which uses the Perseverance rover to collect sealed samples of the planet’s soil.
Dr. Barbara Cohen, a planetary scientist, emphasized that the loss of these programs isn’t just a scientific loss, but an economic one as well. The money spent on researching, building, and running scientific research is reinvested in the economy and drives technological investments.
Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, who represents Virginia’s 10th district, home to many NASA contractors and employees, also spoke to the group. “NASA is one of the best investments we can make in the country,” he said. He shared that he grew up in Texas, near the Johnson Space Center. “My neighbors were astronauts, they were engineers, they helped put people into space, they helped us win the space race,” he reflected.
Before he departed for the Hill, Subramanyam promised to deliver the protesters’ message to his colleagues: fund NASA, return the 4,000 jobs lost, and continue to support science across America.
As the demonstrators rallied on Hidden Figures Way—the street outside NASA headquarters named after the women of color who made key calculations during the space race—passerby of every kind offered their support. Bikers rang their bells as they passed. Garbage trucks and a USPS van honked. Firefighters from the station across the road waved as they returned from a call.
The displays lent credence to another point the group made: NASA isn’t just a source of scientific excellence, it’s a source of inspiration as American as apple pie. How many people used images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope as a computer background? “Kids love space,” Marshall Finch, contractor, System Administrator at Goddard Space Flight Center said. “It’s space and dinosaurs…NASA delivers inspiration.”
Indeed, space exploration inspired some of the most influential pop-culture phenomena of the last century, something the group leaned into. One individual held a sign referencing Andor, a recent installment in the Star Wars franchise. Translated, the sign read, we are NASA, the galaxy is watching.
Multiple speakers focused on how cuts to NASA funding could have long-term impacts for America’s science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) efforts. “We say we want our kids to advance in STEM, but NASA’s STEM office saw its budget cut by 100 percent,” one said, “our children, our teenagers, who could have been passionately involved in science, who could be civil servants, will be denied opportunities and engagement.”
A mother carried a sign reading “don’t blow up my son’s career” with a broken rocket sketched beneath it. She shared that both she and her husband attended the event to support their son, a NASA engineer in Huntsville. “The American people support you, too,” she said to the federal workers gathered.
Another, an aerospace engineer who had worked with NASA in prior roles, lamented the loss of expertise the government would face if the cuts went through. Between reductions in force, the deferred resignation program (colloquially known as the ‘fork in the road’ after the email DOGE sent announcing the effort), and other attrition, civil servants with decades of experience had already left federal work.
Labor Union Representing Goddard Space Flight Center Also Under Attack
The funding cuts are just the latest in a string of attacks against the agency. Monica Gorman, the Area Vice President for the Goddard Engineers, Scientists, and Technicians Association (GESTA), which represents employees at three locations, including the Goddard Space Flight Center, shared that Trump was attacking NASA’s collective bargaining abilities.
Under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, if a federal agency primarily performs intelligence, counter-intelligence, investigatory, or national security work, the President can strip them of collective bargaining power if they determine it is incompatible with national security interests. On August 28, Trump did just that, issuing an Executive Order to end collective bargaining with several entities, including NASA. The Order attempted to justify it because NASA “develops and operates advanced air and space technologies, like satellite, communications, and propulsion systems, that are critical for U.S. national security.”
While NASA’s charter does direct them to share any useful defense technology with the Department of Defense, NASA is a civil space agency, Gorman emphasized, not an intelligence agency, and they’ve been collectively bargaining for decades with no impact on national security. Other offices handle national security aspects of space. For example, the National Reconnaissance Agency, an intelligence agency within DoD, was established in 1961 with the mission to “leverage space to enhance America’s national security and strategic advantage.” The claim that NASA performs primarily national security functions is especially rich considering that during his first term, Trump established an entirely new branch of the military, the Space Force, to focus on exactly that.
Gorman spoke to the crowd about the importance of bargaining power in their industry. In her case, collective bargaining agreements allow her to complete her job without fear of retaliation or punishment if she raises a concern. That can be a matter of life and death.
“The work that NASA does can be dangerous, people have given their lives for this work.” She said, referencing tragedies like the Challenger explosion. Whistleblowers had raised concerns about the Challenger’s O-ring design, but were ignored, in part due to pressure by higher NASA officials. Roughly 70 seconds after launch, the O-rings failed and Challenger exploded, killing all seven crew members.
Gorman summarized the risk of losing bargaining rights; “If people don’t feel safe at work, if they don’t have the trust that they can speak up and bring those concerns forward without retaliation, then those concerns get buried and people will die.”
A giant leap back, indeed.
