Roughly 550 employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are losing their jobs today in the fourth round of layoffs since the beginning of last year. This latest cut adds to mounting uncertainty around the future of the federally funded research center and the missions it’s involved in.

In an update on Monday, JPL director Dave Gallagher announced that the California-based lab will undergo a staff reduction affecting approximately 11% of its workforce across technical, business, and support areas. The reduction is part of a reorganization that began in July and is not related to the current government shutdown, according to the update.

“I recognize this is a tremendous amount of change in a short period of time and will be challenging for our entire community in the coming weeks,” Gal

See Full Page