The race to run JPL comes at a difficult time of federal budget cuts, project overruns, and mismanagement.
Weeks after Trump administration officials announced that management of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory would be open to competitive bidding for the first time, questions remain as to why Caltech would not lose control of the lab founded by its researchers in 1936.
On the other hand, observers note, high delays and cost increases in recent important JPL programs have earned sharp criticism from NASA even before the 2024 presidential election.
On the other hand, it is the second Trump administration’s record to suppress science funding and attacking institutions in Democratic-led states makes it difficult to view any action as an exception to the culpable political climate, analysts say.
“My first thought is this [competition] it’s not really a bad thing. “It’s not written that Caltech has to run JPL, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have some competition to run the place,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the nonprofit Planetary Society.
“That said, that requires that this contract review be fair and impartial, and these administrations have no credibility in such matters,” he added. “The onus is on NASA to earn trust and make sure that that testing is open and free of political obstacles. That’s almost impossible.”
JPL became part of NASA when the space agency was founded in 1958, and Caltech has been awarded the contract to manage the facility since then.
Its current 10-year contract with NASA, worth up to $30 billion, runs through September 30, 2028.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the competition on May 22 as part of the organization’s major changes to the space agency.
“In retrospect, it’s good to consider how many more missions we could have done with resources lost to program cancellations and cost overruns over the years,” Isaacman wrote in the letter. memo to the workers. “That’s a problem we need to fix, so that the American taxpayer and the space-loving public get the highest scientific return for every dollar we spend at NASA.”
Competing with the JPL contract, the only Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) in NASA’s portfolio, was an attempt to address concerns about cost savings, Isaacman wrote.
“This process will take several years, and I don’t think it will affect ongoing projects or the location of the facilities,” he wrote. “However, it provides an opportunity to assess administrative costs, overheads, and find ways to pursue science faster and more cost-effectively.”
In a joint statementCaltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum and JPL Director Dave Gallagher said the competition was “not surprising” and that the team was already there “to make sure we’re positioned for success.”
In July, NASA’s Office of Acquisition held a meeting information event of companies and institutions interested in the upcoming FFRDC contract.
I a large number of registered attendees it includes universities such as USC, Texas A&M and Georgia Tech, aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin and non-profits such as MITRE, which hosts several FFRDCs, and the University Space Research Assn., a university consortium founded by the National Academy of Sciences in 1969. he was not on the list.)
“Lockheed Martin has more than 50 years of deep space exploration success with JPL, supporting historic missions to Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Pluto, including nearly a dozen missions to Mars,” said Bob Behnken, VP of Exploration and Technology Strategy. “We look forward to building on this unparalleled partnership in the years to come. We are closely following NASA’s review and will continue to explore how we can best partner with the agency’s mission.”
Other attendees contacted by The Times declined to discuss their involvement.
Isaacman indicated that JPL may be considered even before he takes over NASA. The billionaire businessman cited high costs at the La Cañada Flintridge facility in the area memo He was scheduled for a confirmation hearing about his priorities at the space agency.
“Contract structure: Too expensive,” Isaacman wrote about JPL at a table detailing organizational issues at each NASA location. “It should increase output and ‘time-to-science’ KPI.”
This institution has recently suffered a lot top management stumbles.
After the JPL-owned The work of Psyche to the iron-rich asteroid failed to meet its 2022 launch date, NASA commissioned an independent review that said internal reorganization and personnel changes had created a frustrated and inexperienced management and a burned-out, thin-skinned workforce.
After 2023 independent review they found there was “nearly zero chance” of the JPL-led Mars Sample Return mission making its proposed launch date of 2028, and “no reliable way” to return rocks from the Red Planet on the budget, Isaacman’s predecessor Bill Nelson said. he took out the phone with proposals from industry and all other NASA agencies, forcing JPL to compete for its project.
After Trump’s election, Nelson announced that final decision it will be in the hands of the next administration.
The White House has pushed for major cuts to NASA’s 2026 budget that Congress rejected, and urged. slopes alike again this year. JPL has developed its own methods to reduce painful costs, reduce staff we went from about 6,500 employees in 2023 to 4,500 last year through layoffs and layoffs.
Its struggles come at a time when NASA is eagerly embracing the private sector. Last month the agency awarded several important contracts for its upcoming moon trip to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and other private companies.
Trump has not hidden that he is willing to punish countries that did not vote for him with job losses. When he announced his decision to move the US Space Command from Colorado to Alabama, Trump agreed that his loss in Colorado in three presidential elections played a part in this.
It’s impossible to think of any decision about JPL’s future as different from management’s history of politically motivated decisions, Dreier said.
“At the heart of this is why? Why now? If this is not just a political attack on California, what do they hope to gain from this?” Dreier said. “That should be explained, because the administration has no credibility here.”
