In an email seen and reported by the reuters news agency, NasaThe interim administrator, Janet Petro, told employees on March 10 that three offices would be closed – including that of the chief scientist Katherine Calvin and chief technologist AC Charania.
The closures will allocate 23 employees of the Chief Scientist’s Office, the Science, Policy and Strategy Office, as well as the Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within the Office of Diversity and equal opportunities.
The cuts are considered to be a campaign of efficiency by the new administration of President Donald Trump, who returned in office in January.
The previous decrees of Trump included a withdrawal from the World Health Organization And Cup in the United States Development Aidthrough Usaid.
Implementation of Trump’s executive orders
Petro said in the email that NASA worked with government representatives to implement Trump’s decrees, who, among other things, ordered government agencies to reduce and reorganize their workforce. Trump signed 87 decrees Since he took office on January 20.
In addition to the staff reductions, the US government has also directly targeted scientific work. On March 9, the US military said it would cancel more than 90 scientific studies on defense threats posed by climate change.
The US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, said in a position on X that the Ministry of Defense “was not climate change shit.”
A third of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Trade Bureau was dismissed earlier this month.
The chief scientist cut not unprecedented
Calvin was appointed chief scientist of NASA in 2022 by the former administration of President Joe Biden – with a specific accent on climate change.
NASA has chief scientists since 1982. Their role is to advise the administrator of the agency and, as the American Association for the Advancement of Science described it on Science.org on March 10, “Keep the voice of prominent science”.
But the role has not always been fulfilled. He previously sheltered from the years 1997-1999, under President Bill Clinton, from 2005 to 2011 under the presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and in 2017, again under Obama.
Published by: Fred Schwaller