Acting NASA chief says DOGE to review space agency spending as hundreds take buyout
Director of NASA's John F Kennedy Space Center Janet Petro speaks ahead of the Crew-7 mission launch to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Aug 20, 2023. (Photo: REUTERS/Joe Skipper)
WASHINGTON: NASA's acting administrator Janet Petro said on Wednesday (Feb 12) that Elon Musk's government efficiency panel planned to examine the space agency's spending, and noted hundreds of agency employees had accepted a government buyout proposal.
"We are going to have DOGE come. They're going to look - similarly (to) what they've done in other agencies - at our payments and what money has gone out," Petro, who was previously the head of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, told reporters on the sidelines of a space industry conference in Washington.
Asked how many NASA employees accepted the Trump administration's buyout plan, Petro said it was "hundreds".
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire SpaceX founder and CEO Musk, has roiled the federal bureaucracy in recent weeks by accessing government payment and personnel systems as it seeks to slash federal spending the group deems excessive.
SpaceX has roughly US$15 billion in contracts with NASA, primarily for sending astronauts to and from the International Space Station and to land humans on the moon using the company's Starship vehicle.
Asked whether Musk's leadership of DOGE presents conflicts of interest at NASA, Petro said "we have very strict conflict of interest policies", adding the agency's legal office would vet any DOGE employee for such conflicts.
A small group of Trump administration officials have already begun to examine NASA's various science and space mission programmes that make up the agency's roughly US$24 billion annual budget, while Petro has been tasked with executing Trump's flurry of executive orders aimed at eliminating government diversity programmes.
"All the officials in charge are really trying to wrap our heads around all the executive orders as they're flying at us," Petro said.
The future of NASA's flagship space programme to land humans on the moon has been thrown into uncertainty as Musk and Trump openly regale potential missions to Mars.
For DOGE, NASA's over-budget moon rocket, the Space Launch System, is seen as one potential cost-cutting target, but the rocket's workforce in Republican-majority states is bound to complicate that goal.
