New York – The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been located in a corner of Manhattan near the Columbia University campus since 1966.
The Institute, called Giss To be short, share the building with Tom’s RestaurantA restaurant made famous by its regular appearance in the successful sitcom “Seinfeld”. While George and Jerry discussed their life of meetings on coffee, two -story scientists were busy developing probes for NASA Travel program and analyze the composition of The atmosphere of the earth.
But thanks to the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government of the Trump Administration, led by the CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, everything related to. In April, Giss employees Word received that their office was closed as part of the last cycle of federal administration funding discounts. They had until May 31 to completely leave the institute’s offices at the corner of Broadway and West 112th Street.
“This is an attack on NASA,” said the largest union of the International and Technical Federation of Matt Briggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) – in Space.com during a press conference outside Giss offices. IFPTE represents 8,000 NASA scientists and engineers, including a number at GISS.
The air at the press conference was dark. We were standing on the sidewalk outside of Armstrong Hall, the Columbia building which houses Giss. As journalists approach, some persistent GISS employees dispersed. Later, we were told that they had been invited not to speak with the press under the threat of losing their jobs.
“Within the framework of the examination by the government of the Baux administration to increase efficiency, NASA cancels its lease from the Armstrong room of the University of Columbia in New York, which houses the Goddard Institute for Space Studies,” said a spokesperson for NASA in a statement sent to Space.com. “In the coming months, employees will be placed on temporary distance work agreements while NASA is looking for and assesses the options for a new space for the GISS team.”
But the criticisms underline that the closure of the office will not save much money from the agency. NASA has already signed a lease per year of $ 3 million per year on the building until 2031, and they cannot sublet the space with external parts. These dollars finally come from taxpayers. “It has no financial meaning,” said Briggs.
In addition to financial waste, the climching has no sense from the point of view of research. Giss has a stellar scientific pedigree dating back decades. In 1966, he welcomed the meeting which zero the Plate tectonics theory. Giss’s staff worked on instruments for historic missions Mariner 5, Pioneer 10 and 11 from NASA and travel. (Voyters 1 and 2, launched in 1977, now explore the interstellar space.)
The installation also houses Climate change records Dating from the 1880s and its scientists participated in the modeling of potential floods in New York which became invaluable during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
While Briggs spoke, the movers started rolling stacks of boxes with labels like “long -term storage library”. Some were storage on the Columbia campus, while others will probably be shipped to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. But it is not clear if all the files – physical and digital – at Giss will find themselves in these places.
The photos obtained by Space.com show the interior of the empty building. The conference rooms are empty. A handful of neon sticky notes, left by the employees, spot a NASA logo. According to a member of the IFPTE, who was sworn in that researchers are civil servants who asked not to be appointed.
Briggs sees the closure as part of an ongoing attack by the Trump administration against science and dying. Columbia in particular was distinguished by the administration, which retired $ 400 million in federal subsidies of the institution in March. But Briggs and IFPTE do not intend to throw in the towel. Their next decision is to ask the Congress legislators to explicitly draft GISS funds in a credit bill.
“What we are trying to do is asking Congress to do their job and protect this place,” said Briggs.