> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.urgentmatter.press/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # NASA said its space archive was down for ‘maintenance.’ Its security office shut it down. - URL: https://www.urgentmatter.press/nasa-said-its-space-archive-was-down-for-maintenance-its-security-office-shut-it-down/ - Published: 2026-10-20T02:55:13.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T02:55:13.000Z - Description: Emails show the security block lasted at least six months. - Author: Adam Schrader - Tags: Government and Cultural Heritage, #public-access NASA kept an archive of over 21,000 spacecraft records offline for months and told the public it was down for “maintenance.” The space agency’s security office shut down the site in August 2025 during an investigation and ordered staff to keep quiet about the reason, according to internal emails. Urgent Matter was provided with a 313-page response to a Freedom of Information Act request that included the emails. “We usually don’t directly address security issues,” NASA news chief Cheryl Warner wrote on December 9, 2025, as she proposed telling the public the site was “temporarily offline for IT maintenance.” The security boss whose office ran the investigation signed off on the maintenance line that afternoon. [Add Urgent Matter on Google](https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=urgentmatter.press&ref=urgentmatter.press) “I concur from an OPS perspective,” wrote Charles Lombard, head of NASA’s Office of Protective Services, who also suggested something NASA redacted. Three days later, staff received a second explanation to share. NASA deputy chief science data officer Andrew Mitchell wrote that employees were “authorized to communicate verbally that ‘The system was taken offline to meet SMD web modernization compliance requirements and it should be back online in the new year.’” Mitchell also wrote that staff could say “the backend remains operational and the archive continues to be preserved and updated,” adding, “However, I am double-checking with Robin Fergason that this is in fact true.” “I know for a fact that this is not true,” David Williams, a retired planetary scientist who previously led the archive, wrote of the maintenance notice in a December 15 email to NASA officials. “The site has been blocked purposefully for some other reason, and this ‘maintenance’ issue is being used as an excuse.” The release does not include a reply. Williams is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against NASA over the closure of the research library at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the decision to take the archive offline. ***Paid subscribers can*** [***read the full FOIA release***](https://www.urgentmatter.press/foia-documents-nasa-nssdca-archive/)***.*** [FOIA Documents: NASA security emails on the NSSDCA archiveA NASA FOIA release provided to Urgent Matter.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/icon/urgent-matter-icon-4d0ab9e2-87cd-46a6-b848-9a4957083943.jpg)Urgent MatterAdam Schrader![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/thumbnail/urgent-matter-icon-2-a2f0d466-de95-45ef-880b-ffdf05e24175.jpg)](https://www.urgentmatter.press/foia-documents-nasa-nssdca-archive/) The archive, known as NSSDCA, is the permanent deep archive for NASA’s planetary mission data. The plaintiffs told a federal judge it is NASA’s “centralized repository of scientific data and mission documentation that enables ongoing research, validation, anomaly resolution, and future mission design.” The shutdown began August 21, 2025\. That day, a staffer in the security office’s Integrated Security Division sent a link to NASA tech staff “with AA OPS Chuck Lombard’s concurrence” and asked them to “keep close hold as the investigation is ongoing.” By that evening, NASA’s cyber incident response team listed the archive’s address, [nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov](http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/?ref=urgentmatter.press), among actions “in progress.” NASA redacted the thread’s subject line and the nature of the problem under a law enforcement exemption. The next day, a contractor on the archive’s team pushed back, telling the security office the flagged spacecraft data was public. “The data found at NSSDC is not the sole or primary source and there are other public resources that contain the same(or even more) orbiting spacecraft information such as https://www.space-track.org,” the contractor wrote. “The data in the NSSDC database is derived from publicly available sources.” Many of the flagged records concerned spacecraft that were “no longer operational/deorbited,” the contractor added. “As of now, the site remains blocked,” the contractor wrote. “We would like to resolve this matter as soon as possible so we can resume operations.” Even a top Goddard science official seemed confused. Stephanie Getty, who now leads Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate, wrote on August 25, 2025: “I have to admit that the recommended remedy from OPS is not entirely clear to me, and perhaps there is confusion on the technical team as well.” “This is an ongoing NASA investigation, the agency has determined there will be no communication sent out regarding the website being down nor the reasoning,” the security office said on September 4, 2025. ## Sign up for Urgent Matter This article is provided free with the support of paying subscribers. Not ready for a paid subscription? Sign up for a free account today. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. “In addition, there will be no further communications to any entities outside of NASA and communications on this topic within NASA will be limited to code 600 leadership and center management.” It named two officials to field all questions: Lombard and Raymond Rubilotta, Goddard’s associate center director. The next day, Marlo Maddox, acting deputy director of Goddard’s science directorate, spelled it out for staff. “For non-NASA inquires: Do NOT respond,” he wrote. NASA employees who asked were to be told, “I am unable to provide any information.” By September 10, word spread at a major international science conference. Robin Fergason, data officer for NASA’s Planetary Science Division, wrote to Rubilotta and Lombard that the rumor was the archive “not only continues to be offline but apparently is being physically locked and not open to access by anyone.” “Unfortunately I have no idea what you’re referring to. As the AD for Goddard, I’m not involved in any of what you’ve mentioned,” Rubilotta replied that night. The directive sent six days earlier had named him as one of the two contacts for all questions. He was later copied on both of the security office’s November recommendation memos. In December, he wrote that “GSFC leadership fully supports the actions taken by our Science Directorate.” Rubilotta also filed a sworn declaration in Williams’ lawsuit, according to the judge’s opinion in the case. Lombard answered Fergason the next morning: “Until then, if asked, your only response should be nothing more than that the NSSDCA is off-line and that you have no further information.” “We will say nothing more,” Fergason replied. Fergason later told headquarters that the Planetary Data System, which she said pays for the archive, did not hear about the blackout from Goddard. “Even though the PDS project funds 100% of the NSSDCA costs (to the best of my knowledge, and confirmed by Edwin Bell, Goddard), we heard that there was an issue from a community member. Not from Goddard nor the NSSDCA team,” she wrote. On November 25, 2025, the security office told top officials the investigation “has been completed.” One of Lombard’s heavily redacted November 21 memos says, “A comprehensive investigation determined that the incident did not involve” something NASA blacked out. The site remained dark anyway. On December 8, a space historian asked around about the archive’s spacecraft catalog. “The NSSDC Master Spacecraft Query went down a few months ago. It was an invaluable historical research tool. Does anyone know what happened? Was this a cost-cutting effort?” the historian wrote. A NASA web team member wrote in an internal reply that “the NSSDC website’s security certificate expired, which is the immediate reason the site is unreachable.” The next afternoon, Fergason forwarded Maddox’s “Do NOT respond” instructions to the thread. Warner suggested the maintenance line 20 minutes later. Later that month, at a town hall during an American Geophysical Union conference, Jim Green, a former head of the data center, asked about the outage. NASA science chief Nicola Fox “acknowledged the NSSDCA blockage” and said “the blockage would soon be resolved,” Goddard data official Tom Morgan later wrote. A JPL staffer asked Fergason on January 5, 2026, about the archive’s calendar of upcoming space events, which a science journalist had often used. Fergason asked Mitchell whether she should respond. On January 7, she wrote that she would “continue to stand down until further notice.” Later that day, after Mitchell suggested asking Goddard what it was telling people about the site, Fergason wrote, “I’m being careful not to overstep what I’m allowed to ask about.” Morgan pressed Maddox for an end date. “While ‘Temporarily offline for maintenance’ is an improvement, is there anyone who can bound this—tell us about when we may see a change,” he wrote on January 12. As late as February 27, Morgan wrote that “the block is still in place.” The archive’s website appears to now be back online. The records don’t show when NASA restored access. The blackout overlapped with the months NASA shut down the Goddard library, which the judge in Williams’ case called “NASA’s largest research library.” Urgent Matter [previously reported](https://www.urgentmatter.press/nasa-recommended-sending-over-95-of-goddards-library-to-gsa-before-60-day-review/) that a November NASA deck recommended sending more than 95% of the library’s book stacks to the General Services Administration before a promised 60-day review even began. Several of the same officials handled both. Records from Urgent Matter’s own FOIA request show that on December 5, 2025, the same day Rubilotta endorsed the archive security changes, Maddox wrote that Goddard chose to “synchronize the GSFC Library closure with some of the other closures/notifications here in Greenbelt” because “this helps us with messaging on our end.” NASA’s statement to The New York Times said library services “were paused on December 9, 2025,” the same day Warner wrote the archive’s maintenance line. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in April that there was “no evidence before the Court that NASA’s decision to temporarily take the Database offline is related to the closure of the Goddard Library.” Cooper denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. Williams had told the court the library “functions as a ‘Rosetta Stone’ for raw data kept in the Database.” [NASA boss questioned Goddard library review, emails showTwo weeks earlier, a Goddard official learned the GSA needed no manifest for the books NASA was giving up.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/icon/urgent-matter-icon-a05fa54d-9d00-437a-8625-d2f9bfa7a4c9.jpg)Urgent MatterAdam Schrader![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/thumbnail/22183953822_75f0849776_k-1c844db9-fb36-4d6f-9e72-4c422505e6f3.webp)](https://www.urgentmatter.press/nasa-administrator-questioned-goddard-library-review-emails-show/) NASA told the court the database was offline temporarily and that nothing relevant to the case had been removed from it. Cooper’s opinion, citing a sealed NASA declaration, says the agency took the database offline in September 2025\. The emails show the block started August 21. NASA withheld 61 pages of records in full and blacked out parts of 117 more. It said one exemption protected “critical information technology infrastructure.” The agency also withheld what it called “employee third-party employee performance information.” The FOIA request had asked for records on “negative actions taken against the NSSDCA staff.” The released pages don’t show any. NASA said more records, from Maddox and headquarters security, are still to come. *Urgent Matter is reader-supported. Please* [*consider subscribing*](https://www.urgentmatter.press/36-antiquities-returned-to-syria-including-13-seized-from-the-met/#/portal) *to support independent arts journalism.*