The recent US federal government shutdown has impacted NASA civil servants, leading to the furlough of over 15,000 employees.
The grinding halt forces NASA and other agencies to scale back their day-to-day operations after lawmakers failed to pass a government funding bill by the deadline.
However, a small fraction of NASA’s workforce remains on duty to protect astronauts on assigned missions, critical safety hardware, and the administration’s highest priorities.
NASA has released an updated shutdown plan which delineates how the agency will operate during the funding lapse and confirm the scale of furloughs now underway on September 29.
Out of NASA’s 18,218 civil servants, 15,094 have been sent home, while a little more than 3,100 are classified as “excepted” and remain on the job.
According to a comparative analysis of the August 2023 continuity plan, NASA projected 17,007 furloughs and just 1,300 excepted employees.
This year, a smaller furlough reflects newly expanded exemptions for Artemis, which now cover work on the entire program, not just operations required for safety and protection of life and property.
During a press conference made on September 23, NASA’s Explorations System acting Deputy Administrator, Laiesha Hawkins, made a prediction regarding the new shutdown, saying, “We anticipate being able to request, and being able to continue to move forward on Artemis II in the event of a shutdown.”
The latest shutdown guidelines incorporate a directive that restricts the use of carryover funds from last year to presidential properties.
In this connection, NASA estimated that it will take around half a day to secure facilities to complete the shutdown of non-excepted operations.
Nonetheless contractors are in a mixed position; a small number can continue temporarily if their work is already funded.
However, even programs with those resources may stall without their NASA counterparts present to offer oversight.
Furloughed employees are legally prohibited from doing any sort of NASA work, even on a voluntary basis.
Only a select few employees remain to spend the shutdown’s first half-day facilitating an orderly shutdown at agency centers across the country.
Federal law guarantees that civil servants will eventually receive back pay, but the timing of those payments will entirely depend on how long the shutdown lasts and how quickly Congress acts.
