A crane towers above the mobile launcher 2 adjacent the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, July 22, 2025.
Richard Tribou | Tribune News Service | Getty Images
The director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Joseph Pelfrey, announced his resignation from the role on Thursday, CNBC confirmed.
Pelfrey said in an email to employees at the space agency that as NASA focuses on its mission to return humans to the moon, it will be “important for agency leadership to move forward with a team they choose to execute the tasks at hand.”
The email also said Pelfrey would work with NASA leaders to “pursue new ways” to “serve our space program and our great nation.” Pelfrey wasn’t immediately available to comment.
NASA confirmed Pelfrey’s resignation and said in an email to CNBC that the agency is proceeding “with a public, open competition to find the next permanent director at one of the agency’s most important centers for human spaceflight.”
At Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama, Pelfrey oversaw “7,000 onsite and near-site civil service and contractor employees,” and “an annual budget of approximately $5 billion,” according to a NASA web page describing his responsibilities. The space center now employs over 6,000 people, according to the center’s official government website.
Pelfrey had planned an all-hands conference with Marshall employees this week that was canceled, said agency staffers, who asked not to be named to discuss sensitive matters. They said Pelfrey’s resignation came as a surprise.
The White House’s 2026 budget request, which has not yet been enacted into law, includes funding for the space agency. However, NASA’s resources have declined amid Trump administration budget cuts.
About 4,000 NASA employees left through a deferred resignation program offered by the agency, and others were let go through cuts initiated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort that was led by Elon Musk during his days with the Trump administration.
The administration also defunded and compelled the closure of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which was housed in a building owned by Columbia University in New York.
