Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/10pdf/09-530.pdf
Page Number: 6

2 

NASA v. NELSON 

Opinion of the Court 

erations,  combined  with  the  protections  against  public 
dissemination  provided  by  the  Privacy  Act  of  1974,  5 
U. S. C. §552a, satisfy any “interest in avoiding disclosure” 
that  may  “arguably  ha[ve]  its  roots  in  the  Constitution.” 
Whalen, supra, at 599, 605. 

I 

A 

The  National  Aeronautics  and  Space  Administration
(NASA)  is  an  independent  federal  agency  charged  with
planning  and  conducting  the  Government’s  “space  activi-
ties.”  Pub.  L.  111–314,  §3,  124  Stat.  3333,  51  U. S. C.
§20112(a)(1).  NASA’s  workforce  numbers  in  the  tens  of 
thousands of employees.  While many of these workers are
federal civil servants, a substantial majority are employed 
directly  by  Government  contractors.    Contract  employees
play  an  important  role  in  NASA’s  mission,  and  their  du-
ties are functionally equivalent to those performed by civil 
servants. 

One NASA facility, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) 
in  Pasadena,  California,  is  staffed  exclusively  by  contract 
employees.  NASA owns JPL, but the California Institute 
of  Technology  (Cal  Tech)  operates  the  facility  under  a
Government  contract.    JPL  is  the  lead  NASA  center  for 
deep-space  robotics  and  communications.    Most  of  this 
country’s unmanned space missions—from the Explorer 1
satellite  in  1958  to  the  Mars  Rovers  of  today—have  been 
developed  and  run  by  JPL.    JPL  scientists  contribute  to 
technology-development 
NASA  earth-observation  and 
projects.  Many JPL employees also engage in pure scien-
tific  research  on  topics  like  “the  star  formation  history  of 
the universe” and “the fundamental properties of quantum
fluids.”  App. 64–65, 68.

Twenty-eight  JPL  employees  are  respondents  here. 
Many  of  them  have  worked  at  the  lab  for  decades,  and 
none  has  ever  been  the  subject  of  a  Government  back-