On Monday, November 10, Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), ranking Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, sent a letter to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Acting Administrator Sean Duffy demanding that NASA “halt any and all laboratory, facility and building closure and relocation activities at Goddard as well as the relocation, disposal, excessing or repurposing of any specialized equipment or mission-related capabilities, hardware and systems, and it must do so now.” Lofgren stated NASA must respond in writing within 24 hours to confirm all such activities have been put on hold. In addition, Lofgren demanded a full accounting within seven days of the damage inflicted thus far and expressed her intent to demand an investigation by the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG).
Lofgren said the closure of laboratories and facilities puts NASA missions at risk of delay or failure and NASA must ensure continuing operation of the facilities at the Goddard campus, “especially work on the Roman Space Telescope.” “NASA made a grave error by failing to properly disclose its changing plans for Goddard to the Committee [and] … in a requested briefing, … failed to mention that an accelerated evacuation of additional facilities would occur within just eight days. NASA compounded its error by taking advantage of a government shutdown to rapidly accelerate the timeline for the Goddard moves while broadening their scale and breadth to a degree that risks drastically negative consequences for agency scientific capabilities. This all must end now. NASA needs to stop what it is doing at Goddard, explain itself to Congress and convincingly justify its actions before it can even think about continuing to move forward,” said Lofgren.
Meanwhile, at NASA Goddard, over the last week clearing of Building 11 has begun, two sources on the campus told the News Review. Building 11 is where the propulsion systems for spacecraft are designed. Engineers there have been ordered to report to work every day but November 11, Veterans Day, and so far staff are being verbally ordered to interrupt their excepted critical project work during the shutdown to instead dismantle their test labs in Building 11, a source working in that building told us on Tuesday. Our sources requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.
In Building 11, occupants were told some large, expensive and unique pieces of equipment will be moved to other buildings on the campus while other equipment will be divested (excessed or auctioned off in bulk). Like others we’ve spoken to about the moves, they were given less than a week’s notice to label everything, pack and prepare for professional movers.
Disassembling large machinery to be moved would ideally be planned weeks in advance to allow for consultation with manufacturers, arrange for professional rigging staff to lift multi-ton parts and coordinate, said one engineer. Due to the minimal notice, however, engineers had to prepare large pieces of equipment for what our source calls a “hastily ordered move.” It’s a move he said obliged engineers to perform all equipment disassembly by “guessing,” and thereby “risking functionality of ‘saved’ equipment once relocated,” and involved lifting multi-ton equipment without safety protocols or professional rigging staff.
“Engineers were told to disassemble their labs under an extremely compressed schedule without adequate resources,” complained the Building 11 engineer. They dismantled their labs, preserving what equipment management would allow, but also were ordered to prepare aislesworth of spacecraft components, rooms full of tools and supplies for excess.
They complied under threat of losing more equipment and supplies, our source told the News Review, and in the hope of salvaging the most critical items for current and upcoming flight projects. He describes a scene of dedicated engineers trying to prioritize and work efficiently, but on occasion breaking down into tears or stunned into silence by the long-term damage they knew they were performing.
“Higher levels of management, career NASA employees, worked alongside the NASA engineers. All under verbal orders and all trying their hardest to salvage what they could and protect taxpayer funded congressionally appropriated space flight projects,” he said.
Some, especially those awaiting the move from Building 11, hoped Lofgren’s letter on Monday might have an impact. However, one scientist told us the move-out at Goddard had resumed early Wednesday morning, following a pause for the federal holiday on Tuesday. Equipment began to be moved out of Building 11 at 7:30 a.m., Wednesday, November 12, despite its owners and subject matter experts being told the move would begin at 9:30 a.m. he told the News Review. “Equipment has already been damaged,” he reported of the latest move that was underway. A second source confirmed moves were underway at Building 11 Wednesday morning and believed they were deliberately begun before the engineers were told to arrive.
