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The library at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, home to thousands of books and documents chronicling America’s space history, is closing in the coming months, raising concerns that rare records could be lost.
The library at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, home to thousands of books and documents chronicling America’s space history, is closing in the coming months, raising concerns that rare records could be lost.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said on X that every item will be reviewed before the closure as part of a facilities consolidation plan approved in 2022 under the Joe Biden administration.
“The physical library space at Goddard is closing as part of a long-planned facilities consolidation,” Isaacman said. He added that the goal is to digitize materials, transfer them to other libraries, or preserve them for historical purposes.
Isaacman pushed back on reports suggesting NASA might discard documents, calling that characterization misleading. Critics have warned that historic and technical records could disappear.
“At no point is NASA ‘tossing out’ important scientific or historical materials, and that framing has led to several other misleading headlines,” Isaacman wrote.
He said preserving history is important, but NASA’s focus remains on future missions, including sending astronauts farther into space and returning to the moon to stay. Researchers will continue to have access to the resources they need, he said.
The library’s closure is part of a broader plan that includes shutting down more than a dozen buildings and labs at the center.
According to the New York Times, the closure will mark the eighth NASA library to close its door across the country since 2022. Libraries expected to remain open include those at the Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in California. Also staying open is the library at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
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Mike Murillo
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