NASA has today fired its chief scientist, Katherine Calvin, and 22 others what appears to be as a change of direction under the new President Donald Trump. The layoffs are in line with NASA’s shift of emphasis on deep space exploration as Trump has already changed the priority to send humans to Mars. This commitment was also re-echoed by Trump when he gave his State of the Union address recently where he said that USA would “plant the American flag on Mars, and beyond.” Among the list of those who were let go was Calvin a climatologist of note who has served as an author of key UN climate reports. It is therefore a concern on how NASA, which owns Earth monitoring satellites and offers its climate data for free, will continue with climate research after her dismissal. Last month, Calvin and other U.S. delegates were not allowed to attend a big climate science meeting in China, and this was seen to have been done by the Trump administration which has an opposition to climate change policies. Trump has previously called climate change a ‘scam’ and has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement for a second time. Besides layoffs, NASA has shut down the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility office. A NASA spokesperson explained that the affected employees were allowed to take early retirement through the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) program. The layoffs were to have taken place in February but Jared Isaacman, Trump’s pick to head NASA and a friend of Elon Musk, requested a delay. The billionaire founder of SpaceX is affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which addresses government cost management.
NASA Fires Chief Scientist Katherine Calvin
