New NASA Chief Pushes Again on Claims Company Is Trashing Its Historical past

The analysis library at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Middle in Greenbelt, Maryland, homes tens of 1000’s of books, paperwork, journals, and mission datasets courting again to the Chilly Conflict area race. After the library was slated for everlasting closure, the destiny of these supplies was out of the blue thrown into query.

On December 31, simply days earlier than the scheduled closure, the New York Occasions published an article stating that among the library’s holdings can be saved in a authorities warehouse whereas the remainder can be “tossed away,” attributing these information to an company spokesperson. This apparently ruffled the feathers of NASA’s newly instated administrator, Jared Isaacman.

“At no level is NASA “tossing out” essential scientific or historic supplies, and that framing has led to a number of different deceptive headlines,” Isaacman posted to X on Friday, following the library’s official closure. As an alternative, he stated, NASA will guarantee supplies are digitized, transferred to different libraries, or in any other case preserved for historic functions, and that company researchers will proceed to have entry to the scientific info and sources they want.

Isaacman additionally posted what he claims to be NASA’s response to the NYT’s request for details about the closure.

Right here’s what NASA despatched to this reporter when he initially reached out:

“As a part of a Goddard-wide campus transformation effort, all in-person library providers at Constructing 21 on the Greenbelt location have been paused on Dec. 9, 2025. These providers embody assortment checkout…

— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) January 2, 2026

Gutting Goddard

Whereas Isaacman’s assertion is reassuring, the lack of NASA’s largest analysis library nonetheless caps a brutal yr for the company’s science amenities, particularly at Goddard. In July, Politico reported that roughly 600 staffers have been anticipated to depart the Area Flight Middle because of the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to scale back company spending.

At first, it could seem that the library’s closure is geared toward that very same objective. Isaacman is fast to level out, nonetheless, that “the bodily library area at Goddard is closing as a part of a long-planned amenities consolidation approved in 2022 underneath the earlier administration.”

Nonetheless, Goddard employees, their unions, and Democratic lawmakers have claimed that the Trump administration rushed the consolidation throughout the current authorities shutdown. In line with a joint assertion issued by the 2 main unions representing Goddard staffers, NASA started the method of closing 13 buildings on the west facet of the Area Flight Middle’s campus in September. That features the library.

“The 13 buildings are to be emptied out by March 2026, a deadline that may solely lead to hurt or destruction to NASA’s strategic capabilities, impacting each present and future NASA missions,” the GESTA assertion reads. “The unplanned and hasty nature of the motion is poised to end result within the lack of tens of millions of {dollars} in taxpayer-funded laboratory amenities, together with refined and high-value gear that will likely be tough, if not inconceivable, to switch.”

A brand new period for NASA’s analysis archives

For some present and former NASA workers, the lack of Goddard’s analysis library is especially gutting.

“I’ve a tough time imagining a analysis middle of the top quality that Goddard is, or any middle at NASA, how they’ll function with out a library, with out a central assortment,” David Williams, a planetary scientist who spent the previous 32 years curating former area mission information and spaceflight journals for NASA’s Area Science Knowledge Archive, told NBC4 Washington.

In line with the NYT, Williams left Goddard this yr underneath an early retirement program.

In lieu of the library’s bodily assortment and librarians, NASA workers can have entry to a digital “Ask a Librarian” service in addition to the federal interlibrary mortgage course of, in line with Isaacman. They may also retain uninterrupted entry to present digital subscriptions to technical journals and different digital content material.

Researchers have expressed considerations that no digitization can totally change the bodily assortment, the experience of the library employees, or the advantages of congregating to work amongst scores of historic scientific volumes. It’s a reduction that NASA is taking steps to protect the library’s wealth of data, however the company’s staffers won’t ever expertise it in the identical means once more.