“Diversity,” “inclusion,” “environmental justice,” and “women in leadership” are just a few of the terms NASA personnel were told to scrub from agency websites following a directive from its headquarters sent on January 22.
Obtained by 404 Media, the memo asked NASA employees to remove the terms by the end of the day.
“This is a drop everything and reprioritize your day request,” the directive reads.
Other words and phrases on the list include “equity,” “accessibility,” “indigenous people,” and “anything specifically targeting women.”
As of Friday afternoon, many NASA web pages containing the banned terms are still up. For example, pages about “Women at NASA,” “Diversity at NASA,” and “Equity and Environmental Justice (EEJ)” remain online. Other pages have received edits, such as changing the word “inclusive” to “fair.”
The move to erase certain terms comes after President Donald Trump took aim at the space agency via executive order. In a memo to employees last month, Janet Petro—the first woman to serve as acting NASA administrator—said the agency would shutter all diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) offices and cancel relevant contracts to comply with the order.
One affected program, Here to Observe, paired undergraduate college students from underrepresented groups with NASA scientists. That program’s funding is suspended, and participating NASA contractors are pulling out.
On Thursday, NASA’s information technology (IT) outreach team sent an agencywide email requiring personnel to remove personal pronouns from their email display names, complying with another Trump executive order. The title of that guidance, “Defending Women,” would appear at odds with the directive to remove all public material “specifically targeting women.”
NASA is scheduled to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon in mid-2027 on the Artemis III mission. Petro in a 2021 interview said NASA’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion “has been paramount to mission success.”
Duane Ross, who managed NASA’s astronaut selection office for nearly four decades, told the New York Times that the space agency has been able to make diversity a focus in hiring due to the massive pool of qualified applicants. According to a recent article in Nature Communications, women may be more resilient to the effects of spaceflight than men, suggesting NASA could benefit from recruiting more.
“More studies will be needed to confirm these trends, but such results can have implications for recovery times and possibly crew selection (e.g., more females) for high-altitude, lunar, and deep space missions,” researchers wrote.
According to a 2023 audit from NASA’s Office of Inspector General, the agency’s workforce comprised about 35 percent women and 30 percent minority racial and ethnic groups in fiscal year 2021.
Like this story? We think you’ll also like the Future of FLYING newsletter sent every Thursday afternoon. Sign up now.
