You can add Another name of thousands of employees leaving NASA as Trump administration prime the space agency to cut 25 percent budget.
On Monday, NASA announced that the Makenzi Listrup would quit his post on Friday, August 1 as director of Goddard Space Flight Center. Listrup has a top job in Godard since April 2023, overseeing a staff of more than 8,000 civil servants and contractor employees and a budget of about 4.7 billion dollars last year.
These figures make Godard the largest of the 10 region centers of NASA, which are mainly dedicated to scientific research and development of robotic space missions, compared to NASA’s human spacecraft centers in Texas, Florida and Alabama with a budget and workforce. Goddard officials manage James Web and Hubble Telescope in Space, and Goddard engineer Nancy Grace is assembled by Roman Space Telescope, another major observatorry for late launch next year is scheduled.
“We are grateful to Makanzi for his leadership in NASA Goddard for more than two years for more than two years, which includes his work, to inspire a golden age of scientists and engineers,” said Vanessa Vayache, an associates of NASA’s acting. “
Goddard Deputy Director, Synthia Semans, will take over as the acting head at the Space Center. Semans started working in Godard as a contract engineer 25 years ago.
Listrup came to NASA from Ball Aerospace, now part of BAE Systems, where it managed the company’s work on civil space projects for NASA and other federal agencies. Before joining the ball aerospace, Listrup received his doctoral degree in Astrophysics from University College London and researched a planetary astronomer.
In a panel discussion with the directors of the agency center at the 2024 Artemis Suppliers Conference in Washington, DC, Makenzie Lystrup.Joel Kovski/NASA courtesy
Formal dissatisfaction
The departure of Listrup from Godard was announced a few hours after the release of an open letter to NASA’s interim administrator, Transport Secretary Sean Dafi, signed by hundreds of current and former agency employees. The letter, titled “The Woyzer Declaration”, recognizes what the signators “call recent policies, which ruin or threaten public resources, compromise human security, weaken national security, and weaken the core NASA mission.”
“The major programmatic changes in NASA should be strategically implemented in the NASA to carefully manage the risks.” “Instead, the last six months have seen rapid and useless changes, which have reduced our mission and have disastrous effects on NASA employees. We are forced to speak when our leadership prioritizes political speed on human security, scientific progress and efficient use of public resources.”
The letter has been modeling on the same documents as dissatisfaction by employees opposing the National Institute of Health and Environmental Protection Agency.
