NPR reports that NASA's abrupt relocations at Goddard Space Flight Center forced engineers out of labs multiple times since last November and as recently as a month before the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched late last month. The telescope, after 15 years of preparation and about $4 billion in spending, faced tests run with less sensitive gear because teams said higher-precision tools were lost or moved; one engineer said, "We can't do the work because we don't have our $6 million antenna chamber anymore." NASA management says the moves, which affected more than 80 facilities, were meant to cut costs, eliminate "waste and redundancies," and follow a master plan that would avoid paying tens of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance. Current and former Goddard scientists and engineers told NPR the relocations resulted in the loss of specialized workspaces, staff, and expensive machines critical to Roman and other spacecraft. Advocacy voices such as Jack Kiraly of the Planetary Society warned those losses add significant risk to billion-dollar missions. Engineers and scientists said Goddard's diminished capacity is delaying projects and could hinder NASA's ability to produce complex spacecraft in the future.
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