Boeing  informed its staff members who are responsible for the Space Launch System jet for the NASA Artemis solar program that they might be facing cuts by April.
No specific changes to the current Artemis program have been made public, but the move highlights the confusion facing the Artemis programme under the Trump management.
Our Space Launch Systems group was informed of the potential for 400 fewer opportunities by April 2025, according to a press release from the business.
As part of the national Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, the firm, which announced the ability cuts on Friday, said it was required to give all impacted people 60-day notices of spontaneous layoffs.
The organization stated that” we are working with our client and looking for opportunities to redeploy people across our business to keep our talented colleagues together.”
Boeing , is the perfect company on the SLS spacecraft’s key step, which when combined with solid rocket boosters from , Northrop Grumman , provide the jet with 8.8. million pounds of thrust at reentry, making it for now the most effective rocket ever to give something into orbit.
The only other Orion spacecraft that has flown so far was the later 2022 uncrewed Artemis I mission, which put the Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft into orbit.
Artemis II, which would be Orion’s first staffed goal, is scheduled for no later than April 2026, with the goal of flying four pilots around without making a landing on the moon. The second SLS rocket has been selected.
The Kennedy Space Center’s main stage for that mission was there last summer and is now located there. There, it will be mated with the strong rocket boosters, be stacked, and possibly fully stacked, and ready to roll to Launch Pad 39-B before the end of the year for wet dress rehearsals.
Orion would rendezvous with a , SpaceX , and Starship while in lunar orbit, allowing astronauts to descend to the moon for the first time since the Apollo program’s end in 1972, and return them to the moon for the first time since then.
The current goal is to be realized as soon as the summer of 2027.
The Trump administration, though, especially with , SpaceX , founder , Elon Musk , pushing for a renewed focus on Mars, may shift the direction of the Artemis program, including the further use of SLS rockets, prompting the potential layoffs from , Boeing.
The layoffs would affect the core stage manufacturing at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in , New Orleans , as well as , Boeing , jobs in , Florida , at , Kennedy Space Center.
Details on how many jobs in , Florida , may be affected were not provided.
Boeing , already announced 141 layoffs amid its , Florida , operations that were part of intentions announced in 2024 to lay off 10 % of about 170, 000 employees nationwide.
Those included 26 at KSC offices, where its Starliner spacecraft is manufactured, and another 20 in , Titusville, the home of Boeing’s Space and Launch Division headquarters.
___
© 2025 Orlando Sentinel
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
