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For the past several months, NASA has been moving engineers out of their labs at the Goddard Space Center in Maryland, the agency's premier spaceflight complex. NASA's aim was to reduce waste. But NPR investigative correspondent Chiara Eisner spoke with NASA employees who say the moves have hindered the agency's ability to make spacecraft.
CHIARA EISNER, BYLINE: Alexa Halford was a NASA scientist based at the Goddard Space Center for almost seven years. That is, until she'd finally had enough and quit her job this past summer. NASA moved Halford and other scientists out of more than 80 facilities at Goddard. NPR interviewed seven current and former Goddard scientists, and all of them said there have been significant impacts to some of NASA's biggest space missions. Halford says employees were forced out of rooms that were often designed for their specific purposes, like building huge spacecraft or testing the smallest of radio frequency details.
ALEXA HALFORD: That might mean you need different types of flooring. You need different support structures, power requirements, temperature, humidity requirements. And not all the labs were ready for us just to move into, and that delays that entire project.
EISNER: Engineers in a lab that develops radio communication for spacecraft say they lost millions of dollars' worth of equipment when NASA management cleared out their space when scientists were gone. They were home during November's government shutdown. What's more, NASA donated some of the lab's machines to a university without the employees' knowledge, according to internal emails NPR reviewed. Jack Kiraly is chief of advocacy at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit that champions space science.
JACK KIRALY: The fact that scientists are not being consulted about what their instruments are going to be used for is really outside of the norm.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Three, two, one and liftoff. Go Falcon Heavy and go Roman Space Telescope.
EISNER: When the Roman Space Telescope launched late last month, Engineers in Goddard's radio lab were worried. This was a $4 billion project. It's one of NASA's biggest recent investments and seeks to answer critical questions about the universe, like how dark matter and energy work.
But before that launch, engineers were asked to test an antenna for the telescope, an engineer told NPR. They couldn't because they didn't have the necessary equipment. Those scientists were unable to verify whether another satellite that launched in July could transmit data to Earth, also because they were missing key equipment that NASA carted off during their move. NASA declined NPR's request for an interview and didn't answer questions sent by email by deadline. Here's Kiraly again.
KIRALY: That only adds a whole lot of risk to an already risky endeavor. And we don't want that to happen because these are, you know, potentially billions of dollars' worth of taxpayer investment.
EISNER: The turmoil of the moves continues to hurt NASA's staffing. Goddard lost a third of its employees last year amid government workforce reductions, and more than half of engineers interviewed by NASA in a new survey say they intend to leave Goddard soon. That's according to an internal survey reviewed by NPR. Halford, the scientist who left NASA this summer, says it was a painful decision.
HALFORD: I really loved that place. That place is so special. And I don't like watching the harm that's being done to it.
EISNER: With so much less equipment, lab space and engineers. NASA scientists say they fear Goddard won't be able to build the ambitious spacecraft it's been known for anytime in the near future.
Chiara Eisner, NPR News.
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UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) You'll leave (ph)... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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