NASA says Musk's DOGE will review the space agency's spending
Kyiv • UNN
The DOGE Commission, headed by Elon Musk, will begin an audit of NASA's spending. Particular attention will be paid to the lunar landing program and SpaceX contracts worth $15 billion.
Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro said on Wednesday that the government's Elon Musk Efficiency Commission plans to examine the space agency's spending, and noted that hundreds of agency employees have accepted the government's buyout offer - an incentive for voluntary resignation, UNN reports citing Reuters.
We are going to invite DOGE. They will look at our payments and how much money was spent, just like they did in other agencies
When asked how many NASA employees had accepted the Trump administration's buyout plan, Petro said "hundreds.
Asked whether Musk's leadership at DOGE represents a conflict of interest at NASA, Petro said that "we have a very strict policy on conflicts of interest," adding that the agency's legal department will review any DOGE employee for such conflicts.
A small group of Trump administration officials have already begun to examine NASA's various science and space mission programs, which make up approximately $24 billion of the agency's annual budget, while Petro has been tasked with implementing a series of Trump executive orders aimed at eliminating government diversity programs.
"All the responsible officials are really trying to get to the bottom of all these decrees they send us," Petro said.
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The Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), headed by SpaceX billionaire founder and CEO Musk, has stirred up the federal bureaucracy in recent weeks by gaining access to government payroll and human resources systems as it seeks to cut federal spending that the group considers excessive.
SpaceX has contracts with NASA worth about $15 billion, mainly to send astronauts to and from the International Space Station and to land people on the moon using the company's Starship.
The future of NASA's flagship space program to land humans on the moon is in question, as Musk and Trump "openly tease" potential missions to Mars.
For DOGE, as noted, NASA's ultra-budgetary Space Launch System rocket for lunar flights is seen as one potential cost-cutting target, but the labor involved in the rocket project in Republican-majority states "is bound to make that goal difficult.