NASA Lab Relocations Put Future Space Missions at Risk

NASA forced scientists and engineers out of their laboratories at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, multiple times over the past 10 months — including as recently as a month before a flagship telescope launch — leaving them without specialized workspaces and equipment critical to building spacecraft, according to an NPR investigation published September 15. Seven current and former NASA workers say the disruption is compromising current and future missions, while NASA maintains the moves were intended to cut costs and eliminate waste.

The relocations affected work on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a $4 billion instrument — the product of 15 years of preparation — that launched from Kennedy Space Center on August 30. They have also delayed a mission to Venus, complicated a water-tracking satellite, and dispersed equipment worth millions of dollars, some of it through auctions and donations.

What Happened

NASA management began moving staff out of buildings at Goddard — NASA’s first and oldest space center and its premier spaceflight complex — in November 2025, while some employees were home during a government shutdown. The moves continued through the 10 months that followed.

The disruptions had direct consequences for the Roman Space Telescope. According to NPR, propulsion engineers had to run fuel tests on the telescope using less sensitive gear because higher-quality, more precise tools had been lost in an earlier move. A radio communication lab asked to test an antenna for Roman before launch had lost almost all of its equipment.

“We can’t do the work because we don’t have our $6 million antenna chamber anymore,” one engineer said.

The equipment and rooms engineers need to build spacecraft are often custom-built and cannot simply be reordered. The moves touched more than 80 facilities at Goddard, a set of changes NASA said aligned with a previously published master plan and would avoid tens of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance.

A Pattern of Setbacks

The relocations have had ripple effects across NASA’s science portfolio, according to the workers who spoke to NPR.

The GRITSS satellite, launched in July to help other satellites track changes to Earth’s water levels and landmasses, went up before it was ready — a first in one engineer’s more than decade-long career at Goddard. Because the team could not test the satellite’s radio communications before launch, scientists remain uncertain whether it will be able to function as intended.

“We are half-blind in terms of trying to troubleshoot it,” said a scientist who worked on the satellite. “The project had to eat the risk.”

Work on the DAVINCI mission to Venus was delayed in August because the team had no place at Goddard to do its part of the job. Its lab and a specialized clean room for large spacecraft work had been moved out the previous November. As of August, the space they were rushed out of remained vacant.

“They clearly don’t have a long-term plan,” the engineer said, “which was not really how we feel you should be treating world-class engineering labs.”

Equipment Lost, Auctions and Donations

The consequences extended beyond lost time. According to NPR, equipment that engineers depended on was auctioned, donated, or thrown away, and NASA’s rules for disposing of supplies were not always followed.

More than 300 items from Goddard were posted on the U.S. General Services Administration auction site over six months, with an original cost to NASA of around $5.4 million. One aspheric test blank — unpolished material used to test telescope imaging systems, originally purchased for more than $250,000 — drew a last bid of just $300.

About a third of the auctioned items were classified as restricted because of their importance to missile technology, national security, or regional stability, according to an NPR analysis of the catalog data. Buyers of such items are typically subject to heightened restrictions, including U.S. citizenship requirements.

NASA also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of radio communications equipment to Capitol Technology University without the knowledge of the scientists who used it. Jeffrey Volosin, the professor who received the donation, said he did not ask for the equipment and initially offered to return some of it, but the equipment now belongs to the university.

“The fact that scientists are not being consulted about what their instruments are going to be used for, what their hardware is going to be used for, is really outside of the norm,” said Jack Kiraly, chief of advocacy at the Planetary Society.

A Workforce Under Strain

The relocations unfolded against a backdrop of sweeping federal workforce reductions. According to a July 2026 Government Accountability Office report, NASA cut roughly 4,000 civil servants — nearly 22 percent of its workforce — in 2025. Goddard was hit hardest, losing about a third of its employees. The GAO found that 25 of 36 major projects reported effects from the reduced staffing, and that NASA’s workforce was left “out of balance” with its programmatic needs.

NASA officials acknowledged to the GAO that reductions created challenges, and the agency’s administrator announced plans in February 2026 to resume hiring and close skill gaps. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, however, proposes cutting NASA’s funding by roughly $5.6 billion, a 23 percent decrease.

The attrition is not over. Almost 60 percent of Goddard engineers surveyed by NASA this year said they plan to leave soon, according to internal results reviewed by NPR. Barbara Thompson, a physicist who founded NASA’s Center for HelioAnalytics after 30 years at the agency, quit in June after her lab was moved.

One engineer who helped work on Roman described being told during the packing process to “pack as if you are never going to build another propulsion system again.”

Disputed Oversight

The workers’ accounts largely contradict a June 2026 NASA Office of Inspector General review, which concluded that moving teams out of labs at Goddard had not hurt ongoing projects and would “not impact NASA’s anticipated missions.” The OIG report did, however, note that communication failures created confusion for the workforce.

NASA officials acknowledged in that report there was “an increased risk that property may not have been properly accounted for during this process,” though the agency said it did not violate policy. NASA has not responded to NPR’s questions about the impacts of the relocations, the equipment donation, or the restricted auction items.

What to Watch

The episode has drawn attention to a broader question about the cost of institutional knowledge: NASA’s most advanced instruments are built in environments and with equipment that take years to assemble and cannot easily be replaced. As SpaceNews has reported, projects including SLS, Orion, and DAVINCI have flagged workforce-related risks, with some tracking cost and schedule overruns.

With a proposed budget cut looming and more than half of Goddard’s engineers signaling they may leave, the agency’s ability to staff and equip its ambitious slate of missions — including the follow-on work of the newly launched Roman telescope — will depend on whether it can stabilize its workforce and secure the specialized facilities those missions require. For now, the workers who remain say the margin for error has only narrowed.

“That only adds a whole lot of risk to an already risky endeavor,” Kiraly said. “These are potentially billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer investment. We don’t do ourselves any favors by putting the people that make this happen in precarious situations.”