Shrinking Space: NASA Plan Cuts Maryland’s Goddard Campus Footprint By 25%

GREENBELT, Md. — NASA is advancing a long-term plan that will reduce the amount of building space at its Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt by about one-quarter, part of an agency-wide push to modernize aging infrastructure and shrink its overall footprint.

The Goddard master plan, approved by NASA’s Office of Strategic Infrastructure after a Feb. 1, 2022, presentation, “charts a path to a 25% reduction in building square footage by 2038.” The plan calls for cutting roughly 1.4 million square feet of space in total, with almost 1.2 million square feet of that reduction coming at Goddard’s principal campus in Greenbelt and the remainder at five remote facilities and other sites.

NASA officials say the transformation will be carried out through a mix of demolitions, renovations and relocations, consolidating work into fewer, more modern buildings. One 100-acre section of the Greenbelt site, known as Area 400, is identified in the plan as candidate property for divestment. The parcel, once used for propellant research beginning in the 1960s, is now largely wooded and its 11 small structures are used mainly for storage and other support functions.

“Goddard is NASA’s premier center for science, and our master plan gives us the blueprint to ensure we remain on the cutting edge of discovery over the next generation,” said Ray Rubilotta, the center’s associate director, when the plan was announced. He said the workforce is “hard at work transforming Goddard and preparing us for the future.”

The Goddard plan flows from a broader infrastructure strategy set by NASA’s Mission Support Council, which adopted an agency goal of a 25% reduction in infrastructure assets over 20 years to better align facilities with mission needs and budgets. A separate assessment by the NASA Office of Inspector General notes that more than 75% of the agency’s facilities are beyond their original design life and that NASA’s construction program is focused on consolidating into fewer, more efficient buildings to reduce maintenance costs and risks to missions.

Goddard is also a major economic engine for Maryland. NASA economic-impact data show more than 3,000 federal employees and over 16,000 contractors work for the agency in the state, with each federal position supporting additional jobs in the broader economy.

At Goddard, the footprint reduction is paired with sustainability upgrades. A 2024 center sustainability report cites multi-building energy efficiency projects at the Greenbelt campus, including recommissioning work in at least 14 buildings and a 15-building utility energy services contract that adds LED lighting, chiller replacements and control system upgrades. Those efforts have helped cut energy use intensity at Greenbelt by more than 30% from a 2003 baseline, meeting federal and agency reduction goals.

The master plan also calls for environmental improvements beyond buildings, such as replacing some paved surfaces with green space at Greenbelt and elevating and hardening launch range infrastructure at the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore to account for sea level rise and severe storms.

Goddard, established in 1959 as NASA’s first spaceflight center, is home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of scientists and engineers who build and operate uncrewed spacecraft and instruments used to study Earth, the sun, the solar system and the universe.

NASA officials say the campus changes are intended to keep that science work on solid footing by shifting it into a smaller, more modern and more sustainable set of facilities in the years leading up to 2038.

More information about the center is available on NASA’s Goddard page.

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