NASA Loses Another Director, Employees' Confidence

Makenzie Lystrup, Director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in the state of Maryland, shared on July 21st that she was resigning from the space agency.

In her letter of resignation, Lystrup did not mention why she was leaving, but stated:

"After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision that it is time for me to step aside as Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. As mentioned in the official announcement, my last day will be August 1," – "I am grateful for the opportunity to have led during both triumphant moments and challenging times. Together we have achieved remarkable things, from returning samples from an asteroid, to supporting farmers and fellow citizens with critical Earth observations, to keeping the Roman Space Telescope on budget and on schedule, to starting the brilliant work for Habitable Worlds Observatory, the next step in a long line of breakthrough science, engineering, and technology." – "As I have said before, we are not in a sprint or a marathon – it’s a relay race in which each of us is handed a baton by someone, and after our run we hand it off to another. Thank you."

The full letter has been shared by NASA Watch.

NASA's Acting Associate Administrator Vanessa Wyche thanked Lystrup for her support of various agency missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope and the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer. Before becoming Director of Goddard in April 2023, being the first woman to lead the center, Lystrup was previously Ball Aerospace's (today BAE Systems) Vice President and General Manager of Civil Space Programs.

Lystrup is the second head of a major NASA facility to leave under the Trump Administration, following Laurie Leshin's departure from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, announced in early March. Leshin left the laboratory for personal reasons but remains as a Professor of Geochemistry and Planetary Science at Caltech, which runs the facility for NASA.

The Goddard Space Flight Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory are both heavily involved with NASA's broad science portfolio, which the Trump Administration is looking to cut. U.S. legislators are hoping to restore science funding to the space agency.

Meanwhile, the agency is losing thousands of employees due to a push by its former Acting Administrator. And NASA Chief of Staff Brian Hughes has ordered employees to stop issuing press releases celebrating new scientific results and achievements, and not to expect restorations to their programs' funding if cut.

The Voyager Declaration

In response to actions from the Trump Administration, 287 current and former NASA employees and scientists have issued The Voyager Declaration to lambast proposed wide-reaching cuts. In the declaration, the signatories, 131 public and 156 anonymous, affirm their support of NASA's mission while formally dissenting on:

• Changes to NASA's Technical Authority capacities that are driven by anything other than safety and mission assurance.
• The closing out of missions for which Congress has appropriated funding which represents a permanent loss of capability to the United States both in space and on Earth.
• Implementing indiscriminate cuts to NASA science and aeronautics research that will leave the American people without the unique public good that NASA provides.
• Non-strategic staffing reductions that will jeopardize NASA's core mission.
• Canceling NASA's participation in international missions that would abandon America's allies.
• The termination of NASA contracts and grants for reasons unrelated to performance which weakens state and local economies across the country.
• The elimination of programs aimed at developing and supporting NASA's workforce that undermines the agency's power to innovate for the benefit of humanity.

Alongside the above points, the signatories also highlight:

"Major programmatic shifts at NASA must be implemented strategically so that risks are managed carefully. Instead, the last six months have seen rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission and caused catastrophic impacts on NASA's workforce. We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety, scientific advancement, and efficient use of public resources. These cuts are arbitrary and have been enacted in defiance of congressional appropriations law. The consequences for the agency and the country alike are dire."

The full letter is available on the Stand Up For Science website.

The declaration was also shared after employee protests on "Moon Day" in Washington D.C., the U.S. capital, took place regarding the NASA cuts. Those protests follow similar ones from late June outside the agency's headquarters and at Johnson Space Center in March.