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TOP 10 TAKEAWAYS
1. NASA spent $24 billion in fiscal year 2024, most of which ($14.6 billion) was on contracts. Accounting for inflation, agency spending has stayed relatively steady in the decades following the moon landing.
2. Number two contractor, Boeing, received $6.4 billion in federal contract spending from fiscal year 2021-2024. Boeing came under scrutiny last year for failing to bring two astronauts back from the International Space Station due to safety concerns with its spacecraft.
3. NASA has depended on private sector contractors to deliver cargo to the ISS since 2012 and deliver people since 2020. Boeing and SpaceX are the two contractors used for bringing people to ISS. Before that, NASA relied on the Russian space program to send American astronauts to ISS, spending as much as $90 million per seat.
4. The Biden Administration worked to embed divisive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ideology into every aspect of the federal bureaucracy, including NASA. The agency was required to make DEI a part of hiring, promotion, and programmatic considerations, and its contractors and grantees were pressured to do the same.
5. DEI activities at NASA included a talk about a book that called Thanksgiving a “day of mourning,” and a nation-wide road tour for screening a NASA documentary about black astronauts called “The Color of Space.”
6. The Trump Administration eliminated DEI activities in the federal government, including NASA, primarily through four executive orders signed over the first two days of his term.
7. In 2024 NASA had around 18,000 employees, up 800 from 2015. NASA spent $2.7 billion on staff salaries last year. While some DEI roles have already been eliminated, NASA is working on a restructuring plan for after Trump's NASA administrator pick Jared Isaacman is confirmed to lead the agency.
8. While engineering takes up the greatest portion of NASA salaries, other salary spending includes $145 million for “miscellaneous administration,” $42 million for human resources, and $25 million for public affairs.
9. Many of NASA’s top grantees and contractors are universities with deep commitments to DEI, including through “land acknowledgments” lamenting the existence of the United States.
10. NASA spent around $21 billion a year in grants from fiscal year 2021-2024. Most of the spending was highly scientific in nature, although a few projects, like $287,791 to use NASA data “with local organizations to advance environmental justice” explicitly embedded DEI.
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