This week brought steady progress across the agency, as teams tackled key milestones in flight testing, propulsion, Artemis prep, and more. It’s a snapshot of how your work continues to push the mission forward, every single day. Here’s some happenings from around the agency:

Keith’s update: I am hearing that people at NASA centers are ask management if the workforce would be informed of the NASA RIF plan. NASA got a one week extension on submitting its plan. No one seems to be certain if the RIF plan will be shared. NASA HQ wants to hold it close due to a high leak potential. Also mentioned is an interest in having Jared Isaacman provide input (after confirmation) before it is released/implemented. Keith’s (earlier) 14 April note: NASA is required to submit their Phase 2 RIF plan aka “ARRP” to OMB and OPM today. So … Janet Petro and senior NASA leadership will know what the basic plan is. How many others in agency management (e.g. Center Directors) will know is not clear. Now it’s up to the White House to drop the axe. According to Guidance on Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans Requested by Implementing The President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Workforce Optimization Initiative: “Phase 2 ARRPs [Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans] Agencies should then submit a Phase 2 ARRP to OMB and OPM for review and approval no later than April 14, 2025. Phase 2 plans shall outline a positive vision for more productive, efficient agency operations going forward. Phase 2 plans should be planned for implementation by September 30, 2025. The Phase 2 plan should include the following additional information:” [more below]

Keith’s note: the following was posted on LinkedIn by Mamta Patel Nagaraja, who was NASA Associate Chief Scientist for Exploration and Applied Research – until that office was closed last month and everyone was laid off. Her words remind me of the time when I decided to leave NASA. But the image – as they say – speaks a thousand words. It stopped me in my tracks. I asked if I could post this and she said “Yes, of course”. FWIW Speaking from experience you can leave NASA – but it never leaves you.

• “I said goodbye to the OG yesterday. I’d love to tell you that I held my head high, but I have never painted a rosy picture online that wasn’t actually rosy. Yesterday was sad. Angering. Relieving, dare I say- after all, I left a toxic atmosphere. Emotionally perplexing indeed. But overall, sad. I always imagined a happy exit from NASA, either retiring or choosing to leave for bigger opportunities. Alas, as I promised you, I’ve dreamed again and you’ve helped. In countless ways. I’m thinking about creating my own company, I’ve got a few startups who want to chat, a prospect where I could help prevent another pandemic, and maybe even a chance to inspire young kids to explore the unknown. And I’ve only been a free agent for one day! Things are looking up – I’ll update you soon on which path I travel next. And if I haven’t responded to your message yet, I will. I just needed to get through my last 30 days at NASA. To new beginnings!“

Keith’s note: This is from [email protected]. FWIW I was in the same mindset when I quit NASA civil service. It hurts. — “Almost 2 months ago when I was in CA, I wrote a letter to you. There was a day then when I walked into the resident office fully believing it was my last day at NASA. I was prepared to lose my computer access at any point, so I wanted to leave you a farewell message. I tell you this because I wanted to set the stage for how long this has been on my mind. Sorry for this being perhaps one of the longest two-week notices ever written, but I think the situation requires it.

Keith’s note: Amidst the ever present fear of being fired (without any real details), having budgets cut and missions cancelled, Janet Petro wants your ideas on how to improve NASA. And you only have one week to submit them. And just like the “Five Things What I Did Last Week” thing, memo there are 5 questions. FYI when I go to https://forms.office.com/g/opuPtHnrRg I get a 404 – that may be because I am outside the firewall. But based on input from inside NASA the link does work. Embrace the challenge y’all. Janet’s memo – and the questionnaire form located online inside the firewall below:

Keith’s note: According to this 2021 ENR article, Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro was firmly in the diversity-is-good camp back in the day. KSC Director Janet Petro Reflects on Diversity: “Petro: KSC has embraced the link between diverse teams and innovation. We reinforce this message with our entire workforce by including it as one of our DEIA Crucial Topics: “NASA sees DEIA as a mission imperative. Our commonalities unite us as a team, and the universe of our differences gives us the perspectives and insights that mitigate group think and confirmation bias.”

Keith’s note: There is no mention in these news stories about NASA offering a new round of buyouts or whether they are considering them. You might ask your management – to ask their management etc. etc.

• New Buyout Offers on the Table for Federal Employees, Fedsmith: “Some agencies have made new buyout offers to their employees to voluntarily reduce the size of their workforces before widespread RIFs begin.”
• Federal Workers Get Second Musk Buyout Offer , Yahoo: “Federal workers at a number of agencies — including the Defense, Transportation, Agriculture and Energy departments — are getting a second chance to accept a buyout offer, the latest effort to downsize the US government spearheaded by Elon Musk.”
• Federal agencies launch second — and likely final — offer to leave, Politico: “This week, at least seven agencies, including the departments of Defense, Agriculture, Energy, Housing and Urban Development and Transportation, as well as the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration, are making a new round of offers for workers to leave their jobs, using the same Deferred Resignation Program that prompted more than 77,000 federal employees to voluntarily leave earlier this year.”

Keith’s Note: on this date 1 April 1996, NASA (RIF) Watch was born with this posting. No kidding. “Editor’s note: From a well-placed source at NASA HQ who participated in this meeting: Mal Peterson (NASA HQ Comptroller’s Office) personally briefed NASA program managers (Centers and HQ) yesterday (27 March) and gave instructions for planning and implementing a RIF by Summer 1997, the reduction to be completed by October 1998, to a total complement level of 17,500, as called for by the President for the year 2000, to be completed by 1998. … Vugraphs were shown concerning “the value of fear in managing corporate-downsizing.” (That is a direct quote) They have statistics on the number of personnel supposed to be within retirement range and everyone will be encouraged to retire asap, though these numbers will not prevent a RIF.”

Keith’s note: In January I noted that NASA had taken the NASA Online Directives Information System (NODIS) offline – so I posted an archive version of what was there before they fiddled with it (see: Someone Is Trying to Erase NASA’s Directives. Oops. We Have Them All). NODIS is now back online – but with lots of changes in according to White House Executive Orders. Well, the DOGE folks aren’t the only ones who know how to code. A NASAWatch reader has done an exhaustive look into what was changed – added, deleted etc. In NODIS “Noticing Changes in NASA NODIS Comparison of NASA Policy Documents Across Two Time Points 2025-01-20 to 2025-03-07“ notes:

• “At the start of the second Trump administration in 2025, NODIS went offline entirely many days , which was unusual. I was curious what changes might have occurred across that gap, but didn’t want to read and try to manually compare 260+ PDfs. No one does. Instead, I wrote some python code to collect and analyze the PDFs available at two different points in time. I figured it would be a good excuse to learn about the Internet Archive and build some skills around programmatic accessing of websites and identifying changes in PDFs.”
• “13 policy directives were deleted entirely with many having a focus on preventing or responding to discrimination. Two of those deleted were replaced by directives with a different name in what is basically a version bump.“

Keith’s note: OPM has posted an immense amount of new RIF Information. The have issued a 119 page Workforce Reshaping Operations Handbook. A one page overview outlines the information and how a RIF will be constructed “When an agency must abolish positions due to reorganization, shortage of funds, or lack of work, the RIF regulations establish procedures for determining how employees are released and whether an employee has retention rights to a different position. The regulatory requirements governing RIF, which Federal agencies must adhere to, are contained in Title 5, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 351. RIF Procedures There are six phases to implementing a RIF. The actual timing of the process may vary based on agency-specific requirements, collective bargaining agreements, and workforce considerations. Specific operational procedures are found in the Workforce Reshaping Operations Handbook | OPM.”

Keith’s note: A slight bit of maybe not good – but somewhat less bad news: on 27 March OPM issued Guidance on Executive Order Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Programs. “This order invoked the President’s authority under 5 U.S.C § 7103(b)(1) and 22 U.S.C. § 4103(b) to exempt agencies and agency subdivisions from the provisions of the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute and the Foreign Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (individually and collectively, the FSLMRS). The President’s Executive Order directs that the FSLMRS will no longer apply to the following agencies and agency subdivisions (collectively, the “covered agencies and subdivisions”): — With a long list agencies BUT NOT NASA. No mention of NIST or NOAA either but NSF is listed. I have no idea what these omissions mean. But for now …

Keith’s note: According to “Internal White House document details layoff plans across U.S. agencies“ from the Washington Post: “The document obtained by The Post was last updated Tuesday. Trump instructed the Office of Management and Budget in a Feb. 11 executive order to work with U.S. DOGE Service and Musk to shrink the workforce. Agency heads’ blueprints for meeting this goal were due to the budget office and the government’s human resources arm, the Office of Personnel Management, earlier this month. Plans for reorganization and further staff reductions are due by mid-April. The document shows reductions of 8 percent at the Justice Department, 28 percent at the National Science Foundation, 30 percent at the Commerce Department and 43 percent at the Small Business Administration, among others.” (AI Image)

Keith’s note: NASA PAO responded to an inquiry from Cleveland Plain Dealer: “The NASA Headquarters building lease is up in 2028, and the agency is looking at options to lease a different facility in the Washington, D.C. area. NASA does not have plans to build a new headquarters. In compliance with the Executive Order signed Jan. 20, NASA employees returned to full-time onsite work by Feb. 28.” Whatever. FWIW the item I posted on 13 March “The New NASA Is Emerging“ is still equally accurate/inaccurate – all of the ideas and brain farts for chopping up/rearranging the deck chairs at NASA are still in play – leases or PAO statements not withstanding.

Keith’s note: This is a note from NASA MSFC Center Director Joseph Pelfrey sent out via Teams this morning. In this morning’s Office Hours meeting he indicated to attendees – multiple times – that information about the ARRP (NASA RIF Plan) was “embargoed by the White House”. Full memo below.

Keith’s note: this email “Latest on Executive Orders, Etc.” was sent to the NASA Armstrong workforce by Center Director Brad Flick on 24 March 2025 . Of all the NASA center directors, this guy sees to be among the few who understand the notion of transparency and respect for his workforce by telling them all that he can tell them. Kudos. Full memo below.

Keith’s note: Greg Autry has been nominated to be the next NASA CFO. In other words he’ll be NASA DOGEFather. Based on earlier public comments you can expect zero sympathy for the erasure of NASA’s greatest asset: its diverse expertise (see screen grab below). Update: official NASA words. Oh yes: they spelled his name wrong in the nomination. Nice way to start. “PN55-3 — Gregory Autrey — National Aeronautics and Space Administration https://www.congress.gov/nomination/119th-congress/55/3 — 03/24/2025 Placed on Senate Executive Calendar in the Privileged Nomination section with nominee information requested by the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, pursuant to S.Res. 116, 112th Congress.” (more below)

Keith’s note: According to texts I have seen from verified sources, this is the sort of thing that DOGE employees use to try and recruit new employees within the space community: “… the opening is in Washington, DC with DOGE. Requires candidates to be non-woke, non-left-Kamala camp, and pro-Elon”.

Keith’s note: there has been a swarm of stories of late about NASA abandoning the whole “first woman and first person of color” tag line that the Biden Administration used with regard to Artemis lunar missions – which evolved further to “NASA will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon”. That tagline evolved out of the Trump 1.0 Administration’s original “first woman” preface as to who’d be landing on the Moon. Now that’s all gone as part of the DEI purge and shunning of international partners that has been inflicted upon all of the Federal Government by Trump 2.0.

Keith’s note: WRT Janet Petro’s update today – she included a comment about her standard update closing “Embrace the Challenge”. IMHO when the entire NASA workforce is uncertain about whether they will even have a job, if their projects will be cancelled, or NASA’s future as the world’s leader in space exploration, “Embrace the Challenge” tends to fall a little short and sound a dull thud as to what NASA’s extended family really needs to hear right now. I went through the RIF-like effort at Space Station Freedom Level II. I know exactly what people are going through. So Janet, maybe you should use that new 5 Question App to ask people how they are doing as this chaos grinds them down – and what you can do to help them through. Just asking them may be enough – better than a hollow slogan. Just sayin’.