NASA Goddard Building Closures Draw Scrutiny

House Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) is demanding that NASA immediately halt the closure of multiple buildings on the agency’s Goddard campus.

“In recent days, my staff has received disturbing reports that NASA is directing the imminent closure of laboratories and facilities hosting mission-critical capabilities at the Greenbelt, Maryland, campus of the Goddard Space Flight Center,” Lofgren said in a letter to acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy.

The closures underway at Goddard “put essential hardware and capabilities at great risk,” Lofgren wrote, adding that the facilities facing closure support many NASA flight missions, and include laboratories “essential to the completion of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.”

“NASA must 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,” wrote Lofgren.

In the letter, dated Nov. 10, Lofgren demanded that NASA respond in writing within 24 hours to confirm its compliance. Science Committee Democratic staff said they had not received a response as of Monday afternoon. The NASA press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Lofgren also demanded that NASA provide a “full accounting of the damage inflicted on Goddard thus far” within seven days, and shared her intent to request an investigation by the NASA Office of Inspector General.

Long-term plans for modernization

NASA’s leadership has, across multiple presidential administrations, pursued a long-running plan to modernize the Greenbelt campus and reduce its footprint through building demolition, remodelling, and new construction. The agency has reportedly justified its recent actions as part of carrying out that plan. But those plans spanned 20 years, and Lofgren claims the agency’s “sudden rush” to close buildings is out of line with what was originally proposed. She cited reporting by Space.com on a September email from Goddard management to employees that said: “Unlike previous large-scale Center reconfigurations, which occurred over a number of years, all planned moves will take place over the next several months and will be completed by March of 2026.”

Earlier this month, the Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians Association, a union representing NASA workers, published an update stating the agency was in the process of closing 13 buildings on the Goddard campus, including around 100 laboratories, with “extreme haste and no transparent strategy.”

“Tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded NASA property and laboratories are at risk of either being discarded, mishandled, or out-of-commission for significant time periods.

Unique and critical US and NASA capabilities are being abandoned without consultation with NASA employees (e.g., mission leads, subject-matter experts), NASA agency leads, Congress, or the public,” the GESTA statement reads.

The building closures on the Goddard campus will hinder high-profile missions such as Roman and Dragonfly, GESTA said. Additionally, the union reports that NASA employees are being pressured to move with minimal notice and “discard valuable equipment and flight hardware they have dedicated years to.”

“Goddard management had previously agreed during union bargaining to halt moves until adequate laboratory space had been identified but they are reneging on those agreements,” the union said, adding that conducting the closures during the government shutdown might be illegal under the Antideficiency Act, which defines what activities federal agencies may carry out during a lapse in appropriations.

GESTA said NASA is justifying the Goddard closures as “cost-saving,” but that “no details are being provided and any short-term savings are unlikely to offset a full account of moving costs and the reduced ability to complete NASA missions.” The union noted that the agency was still paying rent on the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which had its lease terminated in May. The agency also closed the Goddard Visitor Center in Greenbelt in October.

Goddard’s Greenbelt campus hosts the largest concentration of NASA scientists in the agency. The campus houses the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, as well as the Engineering and Technology Directorate, and has a large Earth and climate science footprint.

Future outlook for Goddard

Congress has yet to determine NASA’s budget for fiscal year 2026. In April, the White House Office of Management and Budget proposed a 47% cut to NASA science that would disrupt many projects underway at Goddard, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. At the time, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the leading Democrat on the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations subcommittee, said the plans would “gut” NASA Goddard and the Science Mission Directorate. In October, Democrats on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee accused the Trump administration of illegally reducing spending at NASA in line with the White House budget request.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman, wrote in a leaked manifesto for the agency seen by FYI, that many field sites under the Goddard banner, including GISS in New York and the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, represent “opportunities for deletion, consolidation or at a minimum standardization for efficiency.” In a section about Goddard, Isaacman also said he wished to “evaluate dispersion of mission control centers vs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Johnson Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center with the aim to consolidate at JSC.” In a statement on X, Isaacman said parts of his leaked plan had been misinterpreted by the media, and stressed he “never recommended closing centers, or directed the cancellation of programs before objectives were achieved.”