With 15,000 workers furloughed and funds uncertain, NASA focuses on one mission — return to the moon

By Jackie Wattles, CNN

(CNN) — Some 15,000 NASA employees were sent home this week as a government shutdown began, halting work across much of an agency already grappling with budget cuts and widespread job losses.

But at least one NASA effort appears to be moving full steam ahead: the Artemis program.

With the goal of returning astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in five decades, the Artemis program has been deemed essential work amid the government shutdown. The exception came as NASA leadership and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have made it clear they view beating China to the moon as a national security imperative.

“China is NOT going to the moon with good intentions,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in a social media post last month before the shutdown. “America will get there FIRST, preserving peace for both the U.S. and our international partners.”

A document recently posted to NASA’s website shows that more than 3,000 employees will continue showing up to work during the government shutdown. That’s 2,000 more people than under a previous shutdown plan that did not include the Artemis exemption.

Much of the ongoing work will revolve around Artemis II, a crewed test flight around the moon set to take off as soon as February.

With four astronauts slated to fly on that mission, work on the project “is obviously very safety critical,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, NASA’s acting deputy associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, during a September 23 news briefing.

“We anticipate being able to request (and) being able to continue to move forward on Artemis II in the event of shutdown,” Hawkins said then.

But the exceptions spelled out in NASA’s shutdown plans this week go even further, allowing work to continue on Artemis III — the landmark moon-landing mission currently slated for mid-2027 — as well as Artemis missions expected to fly later this decade or next.

The roughly $100 billion Artemis program is well over budget and running behind the ambitious schedule mapped out during President Donald Trump’s first term. One key issue remains: the performance of SpaceX’s Starship, a gargantuan rocket system that is expected to ferry NASA astronauts from their spacecraft to the moon’s surface during Artemis III.

Still in the early days of development, Starship suffered a string of in-flight failures during testing this year. But its last test run in August went according to plan, and SpaceX is expected to launch yet another test flight as soon as mid-October.

Cuts to science funding

Job cuts and shifting presidential priorities have affected every NASA center across the country, but the Artemis program has stood out. Congress gave the program a budgetary lifeline with a $10 billion allocation for human spaceflight projects tucked into Trump’s megabill known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

But NASA’s broader budget was a hot-button issue even before the government shutdown. And some experts and lawmakers are raising concerns that the agency’s myriad other programs and projects could be barreling toward irreversible harm.

The White House budget proposed slashing NASA’s science funding by nearly 50%, and it suggested cutting the agency’s overall budget by 24%. Critics of that plan — who include advocates and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — have warned that such steep cuts could prematurely end missions in which NASA has invested billions of dollars and threaten the nation’s ability to continue making world-leading breakthroughs.

Even a previous NASA administrator who held the post during Trump’s first term has indicated he views science funding as a cruical part of what the space agency does: “Basic science resulted in us understanding time and space in a way that we otherwise wouldn’t, and it enables GPS (satellites) to function,” former NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said during a congressional hearing last month.

‘Needless disruption and uncertainty’

Separate bills passed by the US House of Representatives and Senate have rejected the White House’s proposed cuts, opting to keep science funding levels flat or more minimally reduced.

“House and Senate have come back and said, ‘No,’” said Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at the nonprofit space exploration advocacy group Planetary Society, during a budget briefing last month. “We want to continue to lead the world.”

But with no funding bill poised to pass both chambers, some lawmakers are concerned that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget — or OMB, which is in charge of enforcing budget priorities across federal agencies — may move forward with attempts to implement more draconian cuts.

A group of eight Democrats and Republicans sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee leadership last month asking that any stopgap measures to fund the government include explicit language to protect NASA.

“OMB seemingly intends to implement the President’s Budget Request (PBR) on October 1st, regardless of this clear congressional intent” to restore funding, the letter said. “For an agency like NASA, a budgetary interruption of this magnitude would be devastating.”

Lawmakers specified science-related NASA projects that would be shuttered mid-mission if the PBR was enacted, including 20 robotic science missions already operating throughout the solar system.

“These collectively reflect an estimated $12 billion of prior taxpayer investment, not including annual operating costs,” the letter states. “And once turned off, they cannot be easily restored, if at all. These mission terminations would also incur significant close-out costs that would be an additional burden carried by the taxpayer.”

NASA’s projects involve complex hardware and long-term mission planning, the lawmakers noted. Steady funding over long periods can be essential for the agency, and the proposed cuts represent “needless disruption and uncertainty,” their letter said.

When reached for comment, a NASA official said the agency is planning for “every budget scenario,” taking into account funding levels approved separately by the White House, House and Senate.

Workers from several NASA facilities who spoke with CNN said the uncertainties have created a frustrating information vacuum for employees.

“Between people leaving and the fact that we don’t know which budget we’re working towards, nobody knows what is going on,” one employee said, requesting anonymity for fear of retribution.

‘Extremely chaotic’

Amid the standoff over the federal budget, the White House has threatened mass firings of federal workers and suggested halting billions of dollars in public funds.

If the Trump administration moves forward with those threats, it’s not clear whether NASA can avoid the fallout. The agency, concerned about losing incoming talent, was able to avoid a sweeping mandate the administration handed down earlier this year in a mass firing of probationary employees.

But job losses still have affected NASA. Roughly 4,000 employees opted to take deferred resignation offers from the administration, for example, reducing the agency’s workforce by more than 20%.

One NASA employee at Johnson Space Center in Houston, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, said the lost workers have included top-tier talent, among them key people who have worked on projects related to NASA’s moon landing program.

Despite Duffy’s determination to escalate plans to develop a nuclear reactor to generate power on the moon, for example, the source said NASA has lost at least one of its foremost experts in power systems.

More broadly, advocates have expressed concerns that the OMB and its director, Russell Vought, may use the lack of legislative direction to implement devastating changes at the space agency.

“I’ve been calling (Vought) ‘Dollar Store Lex Luthor,’” Kiraly said, referring to Superman’s longtime nemesis. “He is somebody that historically has not seen a lot of value in space science.”

The OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In its updated shutdown guidance, NASA also included language stating that “research activities (i.e., grants)” will only be funded if they are “aligned with presidential priorities” — leaving broad room for interpreting what projects may be on the chopping block.

“Things are extremely chaotic at NASA,” another engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland told CNN, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to talk with journalists. “Facility and building closures, union busting … alongside the (deferred resignation) fallout are making it difficult for anyone to get real work done.”

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