Closure Decision Amid Sweeping Trump-Era Budget Cuts
NASA Budget Down 25%... Three Libraries Closed Last Year
"If We Lose Our History, We Are Bound to Repeat the Same Mistakes"
Due to the sweeping budget cuts implemented by the Donald Trump administration, the largest research library of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is set to close. Yonhap News reported on the 31st (local time), citing the New York Times (NYT), that "the library at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, located in Greenbelt, Maryland, will cease operations on the 2nd."
NASA's largest research library will close on the 2nd (local time). Photo by Getty Images Yonhap News
The Goddard Center holds significant weight in the history of American aerospace. Established in 1959, the Goddard Center has played a key role as an important NASA campus, leading projects such as the development of the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The library houses tens of thousands of books, documents, and academic journals. The archives are also known to contain rare historical materials, including books documenting the missions of Soviet rocket scientists from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as experimental documents from past NASA missions.
The closure of the Goddard Center Library is reportedly part of the restructuring efforts pursued by the Trump administration. The Center's private contractors saw their workforce reduced by more than one-third early last year, following budget cuts at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla. According to the budget proposal submitted by the Trump administration to Congress in June last year, NASA's budget was cut by about 25 percent, with the science division-including climate, earth science, planetary exploration, and astrophysics-seeing its budget slashed from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion, nearly half.
Since 2022, NASA has shut down the operations of seven libraries nationwide, closing three of them last year. With the closure of the Goddard Center Library, the main remaining libraries will be at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. In addition to the Goddard Center Library, NASA plans to close 13 buildings and more than 100 science and engineering laboratories on its 1,270-acre (about 5.1 square kilometers) campus by March.
However, NASA has stated that this is not a closure but an integration, emphasizing that the measure was planned prior to the launch of the Trump administration. By consolidating facilities, NASA expects to save $10 million (about 14.47 billion won) annually and reduce maintenance costs by $63.8 million (about 92.32 billion won).
Nevertheless, the Goddard Space Flight Center union and Democratic lawmakers from Maryland have claimed that the Trump administration pushed ahead with the closure hastily, taking advantage of the federal government shutdown period-when there were hardly any staff at the center-and that even special equipment designed for spacecraft testing was discarded in the process. Senator Chris Van Hollen told the NYT, "The Trump administration has been attacking NASA staff and threatening space exploration efforts over the past year," adding, "We will continue to fight against any measures that impact Goddard's core missions."
Dave Williams, a retired planetary scientist from the Goddard Center, expressed concern, saying, "Older materials have not been converted to digital format and are not easily available online. If we lose our history, we are bound to repeat the same mistakes." On the other hand, NASA spokesperson Jacob Richmond explained, "Over the next 60 days, important materials will be stored in a government repository, and only the remainder will be disposed of."
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