The low morale may be an unanticipated challenge for billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, should he be confirmed as NASA administrator. President Donald Trump nominated Isaacman — again — on Tuesday, five months after abruptly withdrawing his nomination. A lot has shifted in that time.

A dozen current and former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, described months of turmoil and sweeping changes that, if fully implemented, could transform NASA and American science beyond the Trump years.

Kiraly also expressed concern for the tens of thousands of students that may turn away from science fields and be discouraged “over the sort of the upheaval that’s happened at NASA and other science agencies.”

More than 360 former and current employees have signed an open letter raising concern that the cuts and mass departures are increasing safety risks for space missions.

“I think NASA has always been an exceptional agency, filled with exceptional people doing exceptional things. And yet we are just getting decimated,” one NASA employee said. “What was so fundamentally broken that we needed to get to this point?”

“NASA remains committed to our mission as we work within a more prioritized budget,” she said in a statement.

In May, Trump proposed a budget of $18.8 billion for NASA, a 25 percent decrease from the previous year — and the smallest NASA budget since the start of human spaceflight in 1961, according to the Planetary Society.

Trump’s budget proposed cutting NASA’s science funding by about half and reducing staff to one-third of its workforce.

Although no budget has been approved by Congress, and the Senate and House versions don’t make such drastic cuts to the broadly popular agency, many former and current employees say NASA’s leadership has appeared to be operating as if the president’s proposal is in effect.

That has meant a hyperfocus on work for getting astronauts back to the moon, the employees said. Meanwhile, the president’s budget puts more than 40 current and planned space missions — largely related to climate and Earth science work — on the chopping block.

“Basically, anything that supports human life on earth is deprioritized,” one worker said.

NASA officials refuted the idea that the president’s budget proposal has been enacted before authorization.

“NASA’s leadership has been clear that depending on the action taken by Congress, the agency should prepare for different scenarios, including a continuing resolution,” Stevens said, adding that there has been “no guidance stating that the [president’s budget request] will become the operating plan for NASA prior to Congressional authorization of a budget.”

Amid shifting priorities and uncertain funding, NASA reported at the end of July that at least 4,000 civil servants — about a fifth of the civil staff — were leaving. More people have left since then, and the numbers are even higher if counting departed contractors, who make up a large portion of the NASA workforce.

The agency hasn’t seen such small civilian staff since 1960, according to the Planetary Society.

Some of the departures have been in response to separation and early retirement offers. While the packages were “voluntary,” employees were told they may be reassigned, transferred involuntarily or denied severance benefits if they didn’t take the package, according to an anonymous memo submitted to several Inspector General offices.

Workers have left from nearly every corner of NASA — scientists with missions related to the moon, Mars, astrobiology and Earth sciences, as well as in engineering, finance and communications. Many departed workers were very senior, staffers said, holding important institutional knowledge.

“No one feels confident that anything planned further than a few months will be executed, no one feels confident that more job cuts aren’t coming, no one feels confident that today’s priorities and next year’s or even next week’s will align,” an employee said.

Like across much of the federal government, the mood at NASA started to change when tech entrepreneur Elon Musk launched the U.S. DOGE Service and sent representatives to the agency early this year.

Some directives were unusual. On one floor at NASA headquarters, workers were told to remove symbols or flags that weren’t American flags — it was verbally made clear that this applied to rainbow symbols and flags.

The change in environment and tone was unsettling, said Grinspoon, who was no longer employed at the agency at the end of September. He said it was unclear where the directives were coming from or if leadership was having their arm twisted.

“One thing I’ve always loved about NASA is this sense of teamwork and people being mission-focused ... and along with that, there was a lot of trust between leadership,” he said. “A lot of that trust started to get eroded.”

More dramatic changes followed the president’s budget proposal this spring.

“As early as June 2025, NASA began ‘implementing immediately’ certain ‘institutional changes’ to align with the President’s proposed budget — which carries no force of law,” a Senate Democratic staff report concluded in late September.

The report, the NASA spokesperson said, is unsubstantiated, and the authors did not reach out to fact-check the report with the agency ahead of releasing it.

The Trump administration has been transparent about prioritizing one area: making sure America gets back to the moon before China, with a longer-term goal of building a permanent base there.

What’s known as the Artemis program has continued to receive funding and largely been spared staffing cuts, said one employee associated with the program. Political appointees have urged those involved to move faster.

Unlike some other agency missions, work on Artemis has continued during the government shutdown.

The support will continue if Isaacman becomes the head of NASA. In a post on X this week, he endorsed “the energy and focus on the Moon,” while acknowledging the near-term difficulties for NASA and talked up the role commercial providers and private capital are playing.

Overall, an employee said, the Trump administration has been good for human spaceflight — “which I struggle with,” he said. “Because what that means is everything that is not putting humans on the moon is falling by the wayside.”

Among the initiatives that have lost support and significantly slowed, one NASA worker noted, are programs that help respond to floods, track fires and forecast what will happen long-term to the world’s oceans, ecosystems and crops as the planet warms. The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which does climate work, lost the lease for its New York City building.

In the aeronautics division, a project designed to test and develop a new generation of hybrid electric-powered aircraft is being phased out, according to staff. Other aeronautical projects have been reduced in scope.

Astrophysics, planetary science and solar sciences are also in limbo, although some projects that were told in July to prepare “contingency closeout” plans — such as the Osiris-Apex mission studying an asteroid passing close to Earth in 2029 — have secured funding for the immediate future.

The cuts have hit NASA headquarters hard. The Office of the Chief Scientist; the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy; and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility branch in the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, have been shuttered.

Beyond Washington, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, home to much Mars and Earth science research, laid off 550 people in October as part of the agency reorganization. Its director stepped down in June.

Perhaps the largest cuts have occurred at NASA Goddard in Maryland, home to “the nation’s largest organization of scientists, engineers, and technologists,” according to its website. If the president’s budget is followed completely, the center could lose about half of its civil workers.

Goddard’s director, who was previously at Ball Aerospace, left abruptly on Aug. 1 without a clear explanation.

Morale among employees is the lowest anyone can remember, staff said. One Goddard employee expressed feeling a sort of survivor’s guilt for colleagues in Earth sciences and other affected areas.

Goddard’s physical campus is expected to contract by March to save money, closing numerous engineering labs, a key science building that houses solar research, maintenance shops, the only full cafeteria and an on-site child development center for employees.

Stevens, the NASA spokesperson, said 40 percent of office space at Goddard was vacant after people took the voluntary separation programs, but the agency was still paying to maintain the space. She said a plan to consolidate the center’s buildings was also approved years ago.

But employees say the building moves are happening on a hastier timeline — months instead of years — and putting flight hardware and labs at risk.

“We heard a story about someone who had to go dumpster diving and only got back some of their stuff because others took it upon themselves to frantically get rid of everything,” said a memo written by and circulated among employees.

“A lot of the skills we’ve had in the past [at NASA], that’s not what we need now,” Pace said. “We do need other skills to integrate, oversee, manage and architect commercial and international and government partners to do exploration and science.”

But NASA staff, he said, need clearer direction, informed by realistic expectations about what work can reasonably be picked up by the private sector or academia.

The newly renominated Isaacman has proposed sending astronauts into space more frequently, adding more science missions in more cost-effective ways and partnering with commercial vendors, for instance. He wrote on X on Tuesday that his plan “never favored any one vendor, never recommended closing centers, or directed the cancellation of programs before objectives were achieved.”

“The plan valued human exploration as much as scientific discovery,” he said.