NASA’s largest research library will close permanently its doors this Friday and with it opens an uncertain future for more than 100,000 booksscientific journals and technical documents accumulated over decades. Many of these funds are not digitized and there are no copies accessible anywhere else, which has raised alarms among scientists, engineers and unions at the US space agency.
The library is located in the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland one of NASA’s most important facilities. Thousands of researchers dedicated to the study of the Earth, the Sun, the solar system and the deep universe work there. However, as part of a broad reorganization promoted by the Trump administration, the building that houses the library will close permanently, and Much of its content could end up directly in the trash.
According to NASA spokesman Jacob Richmond, agency will review funds over the next 60 days. Some materials will be moved to a federal government warehouse, but the rest will be discarded. “It is standard procedure to properly manage federal property,” Richmond said, an explanation that has not calmed internal criticism.
A “consolidation” that tastes like closure
From the direction of NASA They insist that this is not a closure, but rather a “consolidation.” Bethany Stevens, another spokesperson for the agency, maintains that the reorganization was planned before Trump arrived at the White House and that it will save about $10 million a year, in addition to avoiding almost 64 million in accumulated maintenance costs.
The closing of the library is part of a larger plan that contemplates the closure of 13 buildings and more than 100 scientific laboratories and engineering on the Goddard campus before March 2026. The facilities, NASA argues, are obsolete or have security problems. However, Maryland employees, unions and Democratic legislators say the closures have accelerated chaotic manner and without a clear replacement plan.
Goddard is not just any center. Founded in 1959, It is the main space flight complex in the country. Telescopes such as Hubble and James Webb were designed and built in its clean rooms, and recently the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, scheduled to launch in 2027. Paradoxically, the budget proposed by the Trump administration eliminates future financing of this last project.
Irreplaceable books and lost knowledge
The Goddard Library It was much more than a book store. Dave Williams, a planetary scientist who took early retirement this year, remembers it being an essential resource for planning missions to the Moon and beyond. External researchers could also access its holdings, which included works by Soviet engineers of the 1960s and 1970s and detailed documentation of historic NASA missions.
For more than thirty years, Williams dedicated part of his time to rescuing unique information from old magazines such as The Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, digitizing articles that were not available in any other format. “This can’t just be found on the internet,” warns. Much of the older material was never digitized and many recent publications are now behind paywalls.
Other scientists share the concern. The atmospheric researcher Santiago Gassó frequented the library not only for its content, but for the physical space. “I get more creative there,” he explains. “There’s nothing like browsing a shelf, picking up a book and discovering another one next to it. That’s how ideas begin.”
The closure also means the loss of a common space. Building 21, which houses the library, cafeteria and offices, functioned as an informal meeting point where engineers and scientists shared ideas outside the laboratories. With its closure, Everyday collaboration will be even more fragmented.
Meanwhile, NASA offers digital alternatives such as the service “Ask the Librarian” or Interlibrary Loan with other federal agencies. But for many researchers it is not enough. The Coordinated Space Sciences Data Archive has been inaccessible for months and access to key journals has become irregular.
“People are no smarter now than we were decades ago,” summarizes Williams. “If that history is lost, we will make the same mistakes.” In an agency that has taken humanity into deep space, the closure of its largest library leaves a bitter feeling: that of literally getting rid of its own memory.
