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Top Democrats on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee are sounding the alarm about cuts to a little-known but rapidly expanding space office within NOAA as part of the hundreds of recent layoffs at the agency.NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce is tasked with helping to manage commercial and military satellite traffic in space to help guard against collisions, as well as licensing and regulating commercial satellite systems. The office has recently gotten attention around Washington as a key government office for commercial space companies.Its already small team lost eight employees in the initial round of layoffs in late February, representing around 30% of its staff, according to multiple sources. Since then, three staffers in leadership roles were brought back, but lawmakers still worry about the impact.The members of Congress are calling for all fired employees within the office to be reinstated permanently. Earlier this month, fired employees were placed on administrative leave after their firings were blocked by a federal court ruling. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, obtained by CBS News, lawmakers including the committee’s ranking member Zoe Lofgren, of California, say the firings could compromise the office’s public safety programs and risk hurting U.S. leadership in space.
They also question whether there’s a conflict of interest given Trump adviser and DOGE leader Elon Musk’s stake in SpaceX.”If OSC is gutted, the harm to America’s economy, its national security, and its public safety will leave everyone worse off — except perhaps for SpaceX, whose size and scale will allow it to mitigate the damage done to the rest of the commercial space sector,” reads the letter in part. “As the largest and most profitable commercial satellite operator, SpaceX has already achieved a size and scale that far surpasses its competitors, thereby positioning the company to withstand market disruptions and uncertainty with much greater ease than its less-established rivals,” it continues. In addition to Lofgren, the letter is signed by Democratic House members Valerie Foushee, of North Carolina, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics; and Emilia Sykes, of Ohio, the ranking member of the subcommittee on Investigations & Oversight.
Former NOAA officials also say the steep cuts to the office appear to be at odds with policy goals set out under the first Trump administration to help manage increasing commercial and civil space traffic.Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, who served as acting administrator of NOAA during the first Trump administration, called the cuts “self-defeating,” since the office was established to help support a growing commercial space sector. Gallaudet now works as a consultant for space companies.”One of our goals, broadly, was to support these growing tech industries. One of them was space, and we grew,” Gallaudet told CBS News. “If that office has employees fired, that means it’s going to take more time for them to issue licenses to new companies.”Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy playbook, even called for Republicans to “elevate” the Office of Space Commerce, saying the office “should be the vehicle for a new Administration to set a robust and unified whole-of-government commercial space policy that cements U.S. leadership in one of the most crucial industries of the future.”One of the employees who remains on leave, Cole Donovan, served as an international affairs specialist within the Office of Space Commerce. His work focused on regulations and coordination between private space companies in the United States and the European Union. “For my division, specifically, we don’t have an expert anymore on EU law and EU regulation,” he said. “We had been helping U.S. companies navigate that process.”Committee Democrats have asked Secretary Lutnick whether impacts to the U.S. space industry were assessed before the firings took place. They also asked whether any communications occurred between SpaceX representatives and officials from the Department of Commerce, NOAA or the Office of Space Commerce.
The lawmakers also want to know whether the Office of Space Commerce will be compelled to grant DOGE access to proprietary data from SpaceX competitors that could potentially be disclosed to Musk and SpaceX.”These unprecedented conflicts of interest threaten to destabilize the entire U.S. commercial space sector if they are not immediately addressed,” they write in the letter. CBS News has reached out to the Department of Commerce, DOGE and NOAA for comment, as well as SpaceX. Read the full letter below:
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Natalie Brand
Natalie Brand is a correspondent for CBS Newspath, based in Washington, D.C.
