Even as federal government agencies entered a shutdown on the 1st, employees related to NASA’s “human moon landing” mission have been ordered to continue working, the US business media CNBC reported.
According to the report, NASA’s human resources chief sent an email that day to employees who were working on the moon landing mission in collaboration with private space companies SpaceX and Blue Origin, asking them to continue working during the government shutdown.
Federal agency employees will be on unpaid leave during the shutdown, but NASA employees who have been notified to continue working this time will be able to receive pay for that work after the shutdown ends if they perform their work and record their hours worked, CNBC reported.
NASA officials said the agency will furlough approximately 15,000 employees during the shutdown and require approximately 3,000 employees to continue working full or partial hours. The employees ordered to work are related to the Artemis mission, the U.S.’s plan to land humans on the moon for the first time in half a century. SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, aims to land NASA astronauts on the lunar south pole in 2027 on the third phase of the Artemis mission, while Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has won another Artemis contract to develop a lunar lander.