WASHINGTON: NASA’s acting administrator Janet Petro said on Wednesday (Feb 12) that Elon Musk’s government efficiency panel planned to examine the space agency’s spending, and noted hundreds of agency employees had accepted a government buyout proposal.
“We are going to have DOGE come. They’re going to look – similarly (to) what they’ve done in other agencies – at our payments and what money has gone out,” Petro, who was previously the head of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, told reporters on the sidelines of a space industry conference in Washington.
Asked how many NASA employees accepted the Trump administration’s buyout plan, Petro said it was “hundreds”.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire SpaceX founder and CEO Musk, has roiled the federal bureaucracy in recent weeks by accessing government payment and personnel systems as it seeks to slash federal spending the group deems excessive.
SpaceX has roughly US$15 billion in contracts with NASA, primarily for sending astronauts to and from the International Space Station and to land humans on the moon using the company’s Starship vehicle.
Asked whether Musk’s leadership of DOGE presents conflicts of interest at NASA, Petro said “we have very strict conflict of interest policies”, adding the agency’s legal office would vet any DOGE employee for such conflicts.
