Data from our partners at Open The Books reveals some of the spending and DEI information that occurred during the Biden administration.
1. NASA spent $24 billion in fiscal year 2024, most of which ($14.6 billion) came from contracts. Accounting for inflation, government spending remained relatively stable in the decades following the moon landing.
2. The second largest contractor was Boeing, which received $6.4 billion in federal contract spending from fiscal years 2021 to 2024.
3. NASA has relied on private contractors to deliver cargo to the ISS since 2012 and personnel since 2020. The two contractors used to transport personnel to the ISS are Boeing and SpaceX. Previously, NASA relied on the Russian space program to send American astronauts to the ISS, at a cost of $90 million per seat.
4. The Biden administration sought to embed a divisive ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion into every aspect of the federal bureaucracy, including NASA. The agency was required to incorporate DEI as part of its hiring, promotion, and programmatic considerations, and contractors and grantees were pressured to do the same.
5. DEI activities at NASA included speaking about a book that called Thanksgiving a “day of remembrance” and a national road tour to screen NASA’s documentary “The Color of Space,” about black astronauts.
6. The Trump administration eliminated DEI activities in the federal government, including NASA, primarily through four executive orders signed in the first two days of its term.
7. NASA will have approximately 18,000 employees in 2024, an increase of 800 from 2015. NASA spent $2.7 billion on employee salaries last year. Although some DEI roles have already been eliminated, NASA is working on a restructuring plan after President Trump’s nominee for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, was confirmed to lead the agency.
8. Engineering accounts for the majority of NASA’s payroll, but other payroll expenses include $145 million for “other administration,” $42 million for human resources, and $25 million for public affairs.
9. Many of NASA’s top grant recipients and contractors are universities that are heavily involved in DEI, including through “land grants” that deplore the U.S. presence.
10. NASA spent approximately $21 billion annually in grants from 2021 to 2024. While most of the spending was highly scientific in nature, some projects explicitly incorporated DEI, such as $287,791 to use NASA data “in partnership with local organizations to advance environmental justice.”
