NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab laying off 5% of its workforce

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2024-11-13 06:00:05

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California — which manages many of NASA's high-profile robotic missions, such as the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers — announced Tuesday (Nov. 12) that it will lay off about 325 employees, or roughly 5% of its workforce.

"The impacts are occurring across technical, business and support areas of the Laboratory," JPL officials wrote in an update on Tuesday. "These are painful but necessary adjustments that will enable us to adhere to our budget while continuing our important work for NASA and our nation."

JPL, which is federally funded but managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, also conducted a round of layoffs in February. Those cuts affected about 8% of JPL's workforce — 530 employees and 40 contractors.

The February layoffs were spurred, in part, by a reduction in funding this fiscal year for Mars sample return (MSR), a bold campaign to get material collected by Perseverance back to Earth in the 2030s.