U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the Space, Science and Technology Committee, has called for a stop to facility closures at the Goddard Space Center. In a letter sent to NASA’s acting director Sean Duffy, on Nov. 10, Lofgren gave the space agency 24 hours to respond with confirmation that all lab closures and workspace relocations have ceased. She also called for the Agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) to get involved in the matter. “NASA must stop what it is doing at Goddard and submit to oversight by Congress and the OIG before it inflicts permanent damage on agency scientific capabilities with severe and lasting consequences,” Lofgren wrote.
Over the past several weeks, over 15,000 workers at NASA remain on furlough, and now during the shutdown, select groups at Goddard have been granted temporary “excepted” status, with instructions to return to work to pack up their offices and laboratories within a matter of days for “relocation.” Since the first reports about a new Master Plan for Goddard, 13 NASA campuses have been marked for closure by March 2026. Project scientists working on NASA’s next generation Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, which will rival the discoveries of the Webb and the Hubble telescopes, were given only four days to empty a mission-critical laboratory. “This all must end now,” Lofgren’s letter states. “NASA needs to stop what it is doing at Goddard, explain itself to Congress, and convincingly justify its actions before it can even think about continuing to move forward.”
She wrote: “As I noted earlier, I intend shortly to request a formal investigation by the NASA OIG into the agency’s activities at Goddard to determine whether these activities are complying with agency policies and all relevant laws and regulations, whether they are in alignment with the Master Plan for Goddard, and whether they are damaging Goddard’s ability to carry out its scientific and technical responsibilities.”
