Not only air traffic controllers - NASA employees aren’t getting paid either during the shutdown
The boffins at NASA are also working without pay at during the government shutdown.
At launch sites across the country, the mood at NASA is tense. The Trump-induced government shutdown (due to a cross-party standoff over medical care for working people) means that many employees are showing up for work without a paycheck.
Despite this, the boffins continue to work, and tasks are still running across the board. High-stakes projects like Artemis II, the planned crew-mission that aims to journey around the Moon, is still being worked on. At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, employees remain on the clock so the launch schedule doesn’t slip, even though they won’t receive any money until the impasse is resolved.
Trump got his cronies to pay the armed forces, but the climate change denier doesn’t seem too keen on funding pay for people who have given us technological leaps decade after decade.
“I do think we’re rapidly approaching the point where it will be a significant impact, and it’s more to do with overall infrastructure,” Kirk Shireman, a Lockheed Martin VP who oversees the Orion spacecraft program, told Ars. “There are a lot of people, a lot of small companies… They’re not getting paid, and ultimately they’re not going to be able to continue working.”
Why does this matter? Simply put: because NASA’s mission-critical functions cannot pause. Keeping satellites in orbit, maintaining life support for astronauts, and managing ground stations are among those “must-go-on” tasks. And during a funding gap, those roles fall on staff who, legally, are working without immediate compensation.
On the policy side, the shutdown reflects deeper issues. Budget wrangling in Congress means that even revered institutions like NASA become pawns in broader fights. The fact that some employees continue to toil away without pay highlights how deeply science and exploration are tied into political machinery in the modern world. Now we’re not racing to get to the moon against Russia for political gain, so what’s the point in caring about NASA?
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To the wider public, this might feel abstract, but the implications are real. Delayed launches, potential for increased risk in unmanned systems, and stress on an already waning workforce all stem from what appears at first to be a funding hiccup. What’s more, the incident may dent morale and make NASA less competitive at attracting talent when the private sector beckons and ‘rival’ countries continue to take steps to become world leaders in technological development and space exploration, leaving the United States behind.
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