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After NASA's Historic First Flight: Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Update
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By NASA
JPL is a research and development lab federally funded by NASA and managed by Caltech. NASA/JPL-Caltech Workforce statement and memo to employees
JPL statement issued on Nov. 12, 2024:
While we have taken various measures to meet our current FY’25 budget allocation, we have reached the difficult decision to reduce the JPL workforce through layoffs. This reduction affects approximately 325 of our colleagues, an impact of about 5% of our workforce. The impacts are occurring across technical, business, and support areas of the Laboratory. 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.
The following is a memo sent earlier today from JPL Director Laurie Leshin to employees:
Dear Colleagues,
This is a message I had hoped not to have to write. I’m reaching out to share the difficult news that JPL will be taking a workforce action tomorrow, Nov. 13, resulting in a layoff of approximately 325 of our colleagues, or ~5% of our workforce. Despite this being incredibly difficult for our community, this number is lower than projected a few months ago thanks in part to the hard work of so many people across JPL. The workforce assessment conducted as part of this process has been both extensive and thorough, and although we can never have perfect insight into the future, I sincerely believe that after this action we will be at a more stable workforce level moving forward.
How we got here:
During our last town hall, I discussed our continued funding challenges and projections of what the potential impact on our workforce could look like. I shared that we had been working through multiple workforce scenarios to address the dynamic funding environment, and that we have been doing everything we can, in partnership with our colleagues at NASA and elsewhere, to minimize adverse effects on JPL’s capabilities and team.
Unfortunately, despite all these efforts, we need to make one further workforce reduction to meet the available funding for FY’25. This reduction is spread across essentially all areas of the Lab including our technical, project, business, and support areas. We have taken seriously the need to re-size our workforce, whether direct-funded (project) or funded on overhead (burden). With lower budgets and based on the forecasted work ahead, we had to tighten our belts across the board, and you will see that reflected in the layoff impacts.
As part of our workforce assessment and determining where reductions are being made, we have taken time to complete a full review of our competencies, future mission needs, and we have established guidance for our core capabilities across the Laboratory. We have worked closely with the Executive Council, division managers, project leadership and others to ensure we maintain the appropriate levels of technical expertise, capacity for innovation, and ability to deliver on an exciting future for JPL. Our focus will continue to be on empowering managers to support their teams through this action and equipping all of us with a variety of resources as we move forward together.
Here are the details about what will happen tomorrow:
Unless notified otherwise, all employees are required to work from home tomorrow Nov. 13, regardless of their telework status. Tomorrow you will be invited to a short, virtual, Lab-wide meeting with myself and Deputy Director Leslie Livesay at 9:30 a.m. We will relay the details of where we are in the process and what to expect. Please look out for the meeting notification that will follow this memo. There will not be organization-level notification meetings as in February. This one meeting will provide the information needed for the entire Lab at once.
Our approach is to prioritize notifying everyone via email as quickly as possible whether their role is being affected by the layoff or not. Then we can rapidly shift to providing personalized support to our laid-off colleagues who are part of the workforce reduction, including offering dedicated time to discuss their benefits, and several other forms of assistance. Because of system limitations, the individual email notifications will take place over several hours tomorrow. A schedule of the notifications, which will occur by organization, will be shared in the virtual briefing tomorrow morning and also posted on JPL Space, the JPL HR Website, and Slack. You can also find answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on our website here.
Our JPL Community:
I know the absence of our colleagues will be acutely felt, especially after a very challenging year for the Lab. To those leaving JPL as a result of this action, we are grateful for your many vital contributions to JPL and to NASA. We will be here to support you during this time to ensure this transition is as smooth as possible.
To reiterate to you all, I believe this is the last cross-Lab workforce action we will need to take in the foreseeable future. After this action, we will be at about 5,500 JPL regular employees. I believe this is a stable, supportable staffing level moving forward. While we can never be 100% certain of the future budget, we will be well positioned for the work ahead. This may not help much in this difficult moment, but I do want to be crystal clear with my thoughts and perspective. If we hold strong together, we will come through this, just as we have done during other turbulent times in JPL’s nearly 90-year history. Finally, even though the coming leadership transition at NASA may introduce both new uncertainties and new opportunities, this action would be happening regardless of the recent election outcome.
While I know many of us are feeling anger or disappointment with this news, I encourage everyone to act with grace and empathy toward one another, and to lean on each other for support. I will be speaking with you again very soon to discuss our path ahead. Until then, know that we are an incredibly strong organization – our dazzling history, current achievements, and relentless commitment to exploration and discovery position us well for the future.
Laurie
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NASA/Quincy Eggert The design and build of a unique NASA pod, produced to advance computer vision for autonomous aviation, was recently completed in-house at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, by using the center’s unique fabrication capabilities. The pod is called the NASA Airborne Instrumentation for Real-world Video of Urban Environments (AIRVUE). NASA Armstrong can take an idea from a drawing to flight with help from the center’s Experimental Fabrication Shop.
NASA researcher James Cowart adds the top back onto the NASA Airborne Instrumentation for Real-world Video of Urban Environments (AIRVUE) sensor pod at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, in late February 2024. The pod houses sensors, wiring and cameras. The AIRVUE pod was flown on a helicopter at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and is used to collect data for future autonomous aircraft.NASA/Genaro Vavuris NASA subject matter experts developed the idea for the project, after which engineers drew up plans and selected materials. The Experimental Fabrication Shop received those plans and gathered the materials to fabricate the pod.
After the pod was built, it moved to NASA Armstrong’s Engineering Support Branch, where electronics technicians and other specialists installed instruments inside of it. Once completed, the pod went through a series of tests at NASA Armstrong to make sure it was safe to fly at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on an Airbus H135 helicopter. The engineering team made final adjustments to ensure the pod would collect the correct data prior to installation. More about the design and fabrication process, and the pod’s capabilities, is available to view in a NASA video.
NASA researchers James Cowart and Elizabeth Nail add sensors, wiring and cameras, to the NASA Airborne Instrumentation for Real-world Video of Urban Environments (AIRVUE) sensor pod at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, in late February 2024. The AIRVUE pod was flown on a helicopter at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and is used to collect data for future autonomous aircraft.NASA/Genaro Vavuris Share
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Dr. Annie Meier (second from left) and her team inside the Applied Chemistry Lab at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida began supplementing their normal workload in mid-2023 with efforts to improve the lab’s sustainable practices. In 2024, the laboratory became the first at NASA to receive certification from the non-profit My Green Lab for its efforts in sustainability.NASA/Kim Shiflett NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida has a long record of achievements in sustainability and recently added another to the list when the spaceport’s Applied Chemistry Lab became the first in the agency to be certified for its environmentally conscious practices.
The My Green Lab Certification recognizes sustainability best practices in research facilities around the world. The certification program run by My Green Lab, a non-profit dedicated to creating a culture of sustainability through science, is considered a key measure of progress towards a zero-carbon future by the United Nations Race to Zero campaign.
“When I heard our lab achieved certification, I was so happy,” said Dr. Annie Meier, one of the laboratory’s chemical engineers. “It meant we could now make a conscious effort to share these green practices with all who work in our lab. We even added them to our training materials for new and incoming members in the lab.”
The lab performs research and technology development for a wide range of chemistry and engineering-related applications to solve the unique operational needs of NASA and outside partners. The lab primarily focuses on in-situ resource utilization and addressing technology gaps related to lunar and Martian sustainability. The lab’s scientists also provide expertise in the fields of logistics reduction, plasma science, hypergolic fuels, analytical instrumentation, and gas analysis.
While sustainability has long been a focus of the lab, the journey to the certification began when Riley Yager, a doctoral student from University of Alabama at Birmingham – where Meier was a technical monitor – shared her knowledge of the program after pursuing green lab practices at her university.
“I work as a sustainability ambassador at my university, so I knew of this program,” Yager said. “Sustainable practices are something woven into my everyday life, so naturally I wanted to bring those practices into my lab environments.”
After learning about the program from Yager and discovering the many other academic institutions and companies certified globally, Meier submitted a proposal to NASA and obtained funding to pursue certification for the Applied Chemistry Lab.
After a kickoff event hosted by My Green Lab in April 2023, the lab’s path to certification began with a self-assessment survey, in which members of the lab answered a series of questions about their practices in areas such as cold storage, green chemistry, infrastructure energy, resource management, waste reduction, and water. My Green Lab collected and analyzed the answers, providing a baseline assessment and recommendations to improve the lab’s sustainable practices.
“We took their initial survey and learned we had lots of room for improvements as a lab,” Meier said. “Then I worked with a few interns over the summer to spearhead the ‘green team’ to implement changes and get momentum from the entire lab.”
The lab began with minimizing purchases by improving efficiencies during the inventory process. The team also performed a waste audit of all seven of its laboratories. They adopted nitrile glove and pipette tip box recycling, reviewed the “12 principles of green chemistry” with the lab members, and installed stickers and signage about what can and cannot be unplugged to save energy. Additionally, they installed low-flow aerators on the lab tap sinks to reduce flow, and the lab now uses a recycling sink to save on water or solvents for cleaning parts.
As luck would have it, Yager ended up working at the Applied Chemistry Lab on a NASA fellowship and became a member of the green team.
“It was really fun to see that come full circle,” Meier said. “Almost all members of the lab, from our fellows to most senior members, used their self-motivation to get on the sustainability train.”
The green team continued to grow as the lab implemented changes to become more sustainable. Just over six months after the kickoff event, they completed another assessment survey. With possible certification levels of bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and green – the level that adheres closest to My Green Lab’s highest standards – the ACL was certified green, marking the first time any NASA center obtained a My Green Lab Certification.
“Our lab is looking to sustain these green practices and achieve the same status when we are reassessed in the future,” Meier said. “This effort could be a wonderful catalyst to inspire other work groups to lean towards more ‘green’ practices at the frontline in our laboratories.”
The NASA Kennedy lab joined over 2,500 labs in a range of sectors that received the My Green Lab certification. Maintaining the distinction will require recertification every two years.
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