More than 2,000 senior NASA employees set to leave their positions

More than 2,000 senior NASA employees, who hold high-level positions due to their specialized skills or management responsibilities , are ready to leave the Agency due to government pressure to reduce the federal workforce, according to the American magazine Politico, also underlining that such huge losses would deprive NASA of decades of experience, putting at risk the US programs to send astronauts to the Moon and then to Mars. "The Agency's key managerial and technical skills are being lost ," says Casey Dreier, head of space policy at the Planetary Society, an American non-profit organization that deals with space. "What is the strategy," Dreier adds, "and what do we hope to achieve by doing this?" According to Politico, the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is the NASA facility set to lose the largest number of employees, with 607 ready to leave , followed by the Johnson Space Center in Texas ( 366 ) and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (311). These cuts are in line with the Trump administration's goals: at Goddard, for example, they are just a fraction of the 1,414 jobs the White House aims to eliminate. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate bill that would reverse proposed cuts to NASA's fiscal year 2026 budget has stalled following a dispute between senators over an unrelated provision. As Spacenews.com reports, Republicans who had initially voted in favor changed their vote during the session, prompting a recess to resolve the dispute, which could drag on at least until next week.