One of the senior NASA officials is among the thousands of employees who leave the agency

You can add Another name for thousands of employees who leave NASA as the Trump administration analyzes the space agency to reduce 25 percent of the budget.

On Monday, NASA announced that Makenzie Lystrup will leave her position as director of the Goddard Space Flight Center on Friday, August 1. Lystrup has occupied the first job in Goddard since April 2023, with the supervision of employees of more than 8,000 civilian employees, a contractor and budget employee last year about $ 4.7 billion.

These numbers make Goddard the largest field centers in NASA mainly dedicated to scientific research and the development of automatic space tasks, with budget and workforce similar to NASA in Texas, Florida and Alabama. Goddard officials manage the James Web and Hubble Telescope in space, and Goddard engineers collect the Nancy Grace Romance Telescope, another major observatory that is scheduled to be launched late next year.

“We are grateful to Maknzi for her leadership in NASA Godard for more than two years, including her work to inspire the golden age of explorers, scientists and engineers,” Vanessa Wish, Acting Assistant to NASA, said in a statement.

Sinthia Simons, Deputy Director of Godard, will take over as prosecutor at the Space Center. SimMons started working in Goddard as a engineer 25 years ago.

Lystrup came to NASA from Ball Aerospace, who is now part of the Bae Systems, as the company managed the company’s civil space projects for NASA and other federal agencies. Before joining Ball Aerospace, Lystrup obtained a doctorate in astronomical physics from the University of London College and conducted research as an astronomical scientist.

Makenzie Lystrup in a discussion episode with the managers of the Agency Center at the ARTEMIS Conference for Artemis 2024 in Washington, DC.With the permission of Joel Koski/NASA

The official opposition

The announcement of the departure of Lystrup came from Goddard hours after the release of An open message to NASA’s interim officialMinister of Transport Sean DuffyIt is signed by hundreds of current and former agency employees. The letter, titled “Voyageer”, determines what the signatories call “modern policies that have or threaten to waste public resources, settle human safety, weaken national security, and undermine NASA’s basic mission.”

“NASA’s main code must be implemented strategically so that the risks are managed carefully,” says the message. “Instead, the past six months have witnessed rapid and wasted changes that undermined our mission and caused catastrophic effects on NASA’s workforce. We are forced to speak when our leadership gives the priority of political momentum on human safety, scientific progress, and effective use of public resources.”

The message is designed on similar documents from the opposition formulated by employees who protest against the political discounts and changes in the National Health Institutes and the Environmental Protection Agency.