NASA has lost about 500 people via normal attrition as well since Trump took office in January. Counting those losses, NASA's workforce will shrink to about 14,000 by Jan. 9, 2026, when the employees who said yes during the DRP's second phase will come off the rolls, Warner said in the statement.

One of these ride-along NASA efforts is the Athena EPIC (Economical Payload Integration Cost) SmallSat, which will demonstrate a new way of more efficiently placing remote-sensing (or rather, Earth-observing) instruments into orbit.