NASA Chief Defends Agency Against Historical Claims

Key Highlights

• Closure: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center library is officially closed, raising concerns about historical material preservation.
• Response: NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman assures no critical materials will be discarded and will be digitized or preserved.
• Impact: The library’s closure is part of a broader consolidation effort, impacting the agency’s research capabilities.
• Access: NASA staff will continue to use digital resources and interlibrary loans, despite the physical library’s absence.

The research library at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, houses tens of thousands of books, documents, journals, and mission datasets dating back to the Cold War space race. After the library was slated for permanent closure, the fate of those materials was suddenly thrown into question.

On December 31, just days before the scheduled closure, the New York Times published an article stating that some of the library’s holdings would be stored in a government warehouse while the rest would be “tossed away,” attributing these facts to an agency spokesperson. This apparently ruffled the feathers of NASA’s newly instated administrator, Jared Isaacman.

“At no point is NASA “tossing out” important scientific or historical materials, and that framing has led to several other misleading headlines,” Isaacman posted to X on Friday, following the library’s official closure. Instead, he said, NASA will ensure materials are digitized, transferred to other libraries, or otherwise preserved for historical purposes, and that agency researchers will continue to have access to the scientific information and resources they need.

Isaacman also posted what he claims to be NASA’s response to the NYT’s request for information about the closure.

Here’s what NASA sent to this reporter when he originally reached out:

“As part of a Goddard-wide campus transformation effort, all in-person library services at Building 21 at the Greenbelt location were paused on Dec. 9, 2025. Those services include collection checkout…

— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) January 2, 2026

What are the implications of the library’s closure?

While Isaacman’s statement is reassuring, the loss of NASA’s largest research library nonetheless caps a brutal year for the agency’s science facilities, especially at Goddard. In July, Politico reported that roughly 600 staffers were expected to leave the Space Flight Center as a result of the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to reduce agency spending.

At first, it may appear that the library’s closure is aimed at that same goal. Isaacman is quick to point out, however, that “the physical library space at Goddard is closing as part of a long-planned facilities consolidation approved in 2022 under the previous administration.”

Still, Goddard employees, their unions, and Democratic lawmakers have claimed that the Trump administration rushed the consolidation during the recent government shutdown. According to a joint statement issued by the two primary unions representing Goddard staffers, NASA began the process of closing 13 buildings on the west side of the Space Flight Center’s campus in September. That includes the library.

“The 13 buildings are to be emptied out by March 2026, a deadline that can only result in harm or destruction to NASA’s strategic capabilities, impacting both current and future NASA missions,” the GESTA statement reads. “The unplanned and hasty nature of the action is poised to result in the loss of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded laboratory facilities, including sophisticated and high-value equipment that will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace.”

How will NASA manage its research archives moving forward?

For some current and former NASA employees, the loss of Goddard’s research library is particularly gutting.

“I have a hard time imagining a research center of the high quality that Goddard is, or any center at NASA, how they will operate without a library, without a central collection,” David Williams, a planetary scientist who spent the past 32 years curating former space mission data and spaceflight journals for NASA’s Space Science Data Archive, told NBC4 Washington.

According to the NYT, Williams left Goddard this year under an early retirement program.

In lieu of the library’s physical collection and librarians, NASA employees will have access to a digital “Ask a Librarian” service as well as the federal interlibrary loan process, according to Isaacman. They will also retain uninterrupted access to current digital subscriptions to technical journals and other digital content.

Researchers have expressed concerns that no digitization can fully replace the physical collection, the expertise of the library staff, or the benefits of congregating to work among scores of historic scientific volumes. It’s a relief that NASA is taking steps to preserve the library’s wealth of knowledge, but the agency’s staffers will never experience it in the same way again.