WASHINGTON -- The Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt would be stripped of major satellite-tracking programs and several research projects under a proposal outlined in an internal NASA memo.
A spokeswoman at the Washington headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration played down the seriousness of the document. She said the document was a "thinking piece rather than an edict set in stone.
"First of all, it is premature to say what the effect of this radical restructuring will be," said the spokeswoman, Laurie Boeder. "No firm decisions have been made but, yes, everything is on the table."
Goddard, which employs about 13,000 people, pumped more than $2 billion into the Maryland economy in 1994.
A team of senior managers brain stormed the ideas, affecting NASA's 12 research centers, in a two-day meeting this month after President Clinton asked the agency to cut $5 billion out of its $14 billion budget over the next five years.
Ms. Boeder said NASA would have no final details on Goddard's fate for at least four months but said there would probably be some major changes.
"A lot of this is being driven by [NASA] headquarters," said Jim Sahli, a spokesman for Goddard. NASA budget cuts have cost the Goddard Center in Greenbelt the equivalent of 173 full-time jobs since 1992. All the cuts were handled through attrition. An additional 200 are expected to be lost by 1999.
"We are under tremendous pressure to massively cut back our budget," Ms. Boeder said. "So, every center is going to be hard-hit. Basically, we have to reinvent NASA. It's going to be tough. Essentially, we're having to ask people to think of creative ways to eliminate their own jobs. Although we are going to move with speed and caution, we aren't going to do anything rash."
The memo, prepared for NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, does not specify how many jobs would be cut, but it does outline program changes for Goddard.
The proposed restructuring came as a surprise to Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat whose district includes the Goddard center. "We were not briefed," said Jesse Jacobs, a spokesman for Mr. Hoyer.
Mr. Jacobs said the congressman would look into the proposal and talk with NASA officials about it.
The document stops short of proposing to close any of NASA's regional centers. But Ames Research Center in California and Langley Research Center in Virginia would be stripped of their space research functions.
Goddard would lose only one of its major functions -- the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System -- to Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. But in addition, "all [satellite] mission operations and communications will eventually be transferred elsewhere," the document states.
Pieces of the $1.3 billion "Mission to Planet Earth" project to examine the planet from space would also be privatized and consolidated, according to the paper. Buildings to house the project are already under construction at Goddard.
The document proposes handing over the management of the project's database to the private sector and merging Goddard's data operations systems with the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico.
"The purpose [of the paper] is to discuss and consider how we can streamline a changing agency," said Mr. Sahli, the spokesman for Goddard.