The Trump administration issued an executive order late last month, quietly declaring that NASA will operate as a national intelligence and security agency going forward.
The order stipulates that the agency will now “have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”
It’s a major departure for the agency, which has historically focused on space exploration, as well as space and Earth sciences over its 67-year lifespan.
“No mention of that science and exploration stuff,” NASA Watch founder Keith Cowing, a former scientist at the agency who now closely follows its internal and external politics, wrote in a blog post.
There are signs that Trump’s intentions behind the order were at least partially related to labor concerns, rather than spycraft. The order also added NASA to the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), excluding it from collective bargaining representation.
The news that NASA will now be a spy agency was seemingly overshadowed in the media by the president’s elimination of union rights for thousands of federal employees — mere days before Labor Day — despite multiple lawsuits challenging the change.
The change of status outlined in the order will also affect other agencies and subdivisions of the government, including the International Trade Administration and the National Weather Service.
The move sparked a protest outside of NASA’s Washington, DC, headquarters earlier this week.
“A huge part of the reason that I have that independence, and that my colleagues do, is that as a union-represented worker I know that I am protected from unfair retaliation,” Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians Association area vice president Monica Gorman told the crowd, as quoted by Government Executive.
Trump’s latest declaration comes at a turbulent time for NASA. The White House has already threatened to cut the agency’s science budget in half for the next fiscal year, potentially putting dozens of major space missions on ice.
While lawmakers have come up with a far more lenient revision to the proposed budget, NASA is quickly running out of time.
Trump’s most recent reimagining of NASA also underlines the president’s desire to militarize space and commitment and send “boots” to the Moon and Mars, as interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy recently put it.
The president has also proposed sending weapons into space for the first time as part of his proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense program, raising concerns over a space arms race with the United States’ adversaries.
Meanwhile, space science has taken a back seat, with Duffy vowing last month that NASA will give up on “all of these Earth sciences,” highlighting the White House’s dismissal of climate change and anti-science stance.
Despite its doubling down on crewed space exploration, experts warn that the United States could fall behind China in the race to return to the Moon.
Put it all together, and it feels as though the government is increasingly NASA’s primary adversary, with the agency is expected to lose thousands of senior-ranking employees as Trump remakes the United States in his image.
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