A whole lot of workers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) might be affected by price range constraints looming over the house company for the present yr, with Congress nonetheless behind on issuing the ultimate price range for 2024 and its closing determination relating to Mars Pattern Return (MSR).
In a statement issued on Tuesday, JPL introduced that it’ll layoff 530 workers, 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 house company fears federal price range cuts to its total 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 price range. On the similar time, NASA paused work on the Mars Pattern Return’s Seize, Containment and Return System, an important side of the MSR program, anticipating that its formidable mission will obtain lower than one-third of the requested funding.
“Whereas we nonetheless don’t have an FY24 appropriation or the ultimate phrase from Congress on our Mars Pattern Return (MSR) price range allocation, we at the moment are able the place we should take additional important motion to cut back our spending,” JPL Director Laurie Leshin wrote in a memo to JPL workers.
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 house company’s price range request. On prime of that, NASA had come below heavy scrutiny for having unrealistic value and timeline expectations for MSR.
NASA had requested $949.3 million for MSR in its budget proposal for 2024, however it is going to possible obtain $300 million. That’s 36% of the $822-million price range the mission obtained in 2023, an indication that the Senate Appropriations subcommittee liable for overseeing NASA’s price range is clamping down on the house company’s overly formidable objectives of launching a lander and orbiter to Mars in 2028.
In its proposed 2024 price range for NASA, the Senate Appropriations subcommittee directed the space agency to submit a year-by-year funding profile for MSR throughout the $5.3 billion lifecycle value 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 closing price range for the yr, and there was no closing determination made by Congress relating to MSR. The house company, nonetheless, fears that it’ll be unhealthy information and is due to this fact doing what it may possibly now to cut back its spending because it awaits closing phrase.
NASA has already made some cuts to its unique price range request for 2024, particularly suspending work on the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, a gaggle of satellites designed to check Earth’s higher environment. Different missions have additionally suffered because of budgeting considerations at JPL, resembling 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 in actual fact is was JPL saying the layoffs. As a federally funded analysis and growth heart, JPL is managed by Caltech, and its workers work for Caltech. Whereas JPL is part of Caltech, its main goal and actions are centered round numerous house missions for NASA.
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