NASA may lose 4,000 employees after second deferred resignation round

NASA could be on track to lose nearly a fifth of its workforce, with close to 4,000 employees applying for buyouts under a deferred resignation scheme, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The second round of applications for the voluntary departure programme closed on July 25, with approximately 3,000 employees submitting resignations, according to a statement provided by the space agency to Bloomberg.

This marks a sharp escalation from the initial round, which saw 870 NASA staffers opt to exit. In total, around 20% of NASA’s current workforce may be stepping away from the agency.

The deferred resignation initiative was introduced in January under the Trump administration as a cost-cutting measure targeting the federal workforce. According to Bloomberg, the programme allows employees to resign voluntarily while continuing to receive benefits and compensation for a set period.

The buyout was spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which at the time was led by Elon Musk. The billionaire entrepreneur, also the CEO of SpaceX, was tapped by the Trump administration to restructure several federal agencies with a mandate to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

While details of Musk’s tenure at DOGE remain sparse, the impact of the resignation programme is now coming into sharper focus. The latest surge in departures coincides with the release of internal projections showing the agency could face devastating budget cuts—particularly in its science programmes.

Earlier this month, Politico reported that more than 2,000 senior NASA employees had already agreed to leave. The cumulative attrition has raised alarms among scientists, engineers and national security experts.

On July 21, a coalition of current and former NASA staff members penned an open letter to Interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy, urging the agency to push back against the proposed funding reductions. The letter, which has since been widely circulated among academic and aerospace communities, warns that the cuts “threaten to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission.”

The employees argue that the current policies amount to a systematic hollowing out of the agency’s capacity to deliver on its scientific, exploratory and defence-related mandates.

“NASA isn’t just about rockets and astronauts—it’s about safeguarding American innovation, global leadership in science, and the safety of those who take these missions on behalf of humanity,” the letter reads.

Although no formal comment has been made by Sean Duffy on the letter or the resignation figures, NASA has confirmed that it is reviewing the applications and is committed to maintaining the integrity of its ongoing missions.

The exodus of such a large number of experienced personnel poses both immediate and long-term risks. Experts have warned that without sufficient staffing, ongoing missions such as the Artemis programme—NASA’s effort to return humans to the Moon—and key climate monitoring projects may face delays or compromises.

Dr Linda Carraway, a former NASA programme director and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told CNBC that the loss of institutional memory and expertise could set the agency back “by a decade or more” in areas such as deep space exploration and satellite-based climate research.

“Talent is not plug-and-play in an organisation like NASA,” she said. “You can’t replace a Mars mission engineer with a software generalist overnight. The knowledge drain is real, and it’s alarming.”

The scale of the resignations is expected to trigger congressional review, particularly among members of committees overseeing science, space and technology. While some lawmakers have championed cost-cutting across federal agencies, others have expressed unease at the impact on national priorities.

Representative Adam Schultz (D-CA), who sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, issued a statement over the weekend calling for a full audit of the deferred resignation programme and a reassessment of NASA’s budget.

“We need to ensure that political agendas aren’t eroding America’s edge in science and space,” Schultz said.

As the agency reviews resignation applications, uncertainty looms over whether further rounds of departures are planned. For now, NASA’s leadership must contend with what appears to be one of the largest workforce reductions in the agency’s recent history—and the difficult questions that come with it.