Tomorrow is taking shape, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Preparations for an orbiter to unlock the “cosmic mysteries of dark matter and dark energy”? Final assembly of a probe to investigate life on Europa? Tweaks to a demonstration of “the revolutionary capability of deep space CubeSats”?
No. Layoffs.
Last week, the NASA center — owned by D.C.’s astro-bureaucracy, but founded and still operated by the California Institute of Technology — issued a statement informing employees that it had made “the difficult decision to reduce the JPL workforce through layoffs.” The “painful but necessary adjustments” mean pink slips for a total of 570 workers, including contractors.
U.S. Rep. Judy Chu is not amused. It’s surely a coincidence that the Democrat’s district includes JPL, but either way, she’s “extremely disappointed,” and her “thoughts are with the workers who will be impacted and their families.” Not only does the decision “devastate workers and Southern California in the short-term,” it hobbles the “long-term viability of … many years of scientific discovery to come.”
JPL justified its announcement by blaming Congress, which has yet to deliver “an FY24 appropriation or the final word … on our Mars Sample Return (MSR) budget allocation.” The mission, planned to “use robotic systems and a Mars ascent rocket to collect and send samples of Martian rocks, soils and atmosphere to Earth for detailed chemical and physical analysis,” is beloved by NASA’s enablers on Capitol Hill.
It’s also decades late. In 1996, JPL’s Daniel J. McCleese told The New York Times that his team was “seriously looking at a 2003 sample return.” Twenty-seven years later, “an independent review board” documented “serious issues with [MSR’s] technical readiness, cost and schedule.”
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