"NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to Cut 570 Jobs Amid Budget Gridlock"

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California is laying off around 530 employees and 40 contractors, amounting to eight percent of the facility's workforce, due to budget uncertainty and the absence of an FY24 appropriation from Congress. The cuts are a result of the agency's need to adjust to a lower budget and protect against deeper cuts later. The uncertainty over the final budget allocation for the Mars Sample Return mission, which is expected to receive around $300 million, has played a major factor in the layoffs, despite the mission's success so far with the Perseverance rover uncovering soil samples containing evidence of organic matter on Mars.