Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has notified Congress of his plans to shut down the State Department‘s cyber coordinator office and transfer its responsibilities to the economics bureau, Nextgov reported Tuesday.

Tillerson wrote in a letter to Sen. Robert Corker (R-Tennessee) that he also aims to eliminate or realign special envoy positions as part of a larger effort to reorganize the State Department, the report noted.

The reorganization effort is intended to streamline department operations, address redundancies and consolidate offices within regional and functional bureaus, according to Tillerson.

The move could also support Tillerson’s plan to reduce the State Department’s budget by approximately 30 percent, Nextgov noted.

Certain special roles will be retained and expanded, including the special ambassador for religious freedom and a representative to Muslim communities, the report said.

NASA‘s Johnson Space Center will be closed to non-essential personnel through Labor Day on Sept. 4 as a result of the weather conditions in Houston, Texas and the impact of Tropical Storm Harvey.

The space agency said Wednesday that the center’s leaders continue to monitor the situation in Houston and will prepare to assess the facility’s status after the storm passes.

NASA noted that the closure of the center will allow employees to stay away from harsh road conditions as well as provide an opportunity for select personnel to continue high-priority mission activities such as the landing of three crew members.

“Our primary concern is the safety of our employees and all our fellow Houstonians … We’re taking these measures to ensure the members of our team and their families can take care of themselves and their neighbors,” said Ellen Ochoa, director of the Johnson Space Center.

The space agency began placed the James Webb Space Telescope in a giant thermal vacuum at the Johnson Space Center in July as part of a 100-day cryogenic test that will look to validate the platform’s capacity to withstand against the cold temperatures in space.

NASA said that backup systems at the space center have been prepared to support the James Webb Space Telescope testing if necessary.

A trade group says delays in background checks on individuals that have applied for security clearances from the federal government have resulted in a backlog of more than 700,000 applications, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

That figure from the Aerospace Industry Association reflects an increase from the backlog of about 570,000 unfinished clearances the Office of Personnel Management reported in 2016.

A federal official said in May the process for securing security clearances at the top-secret level took at least 450 days to finish as of March.

OPM also stopped issuing reports on the backlog after the Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum in June that seeks to reduce reporting requirements for federal agencies.

The delay in federal background checks also has posed a challenge to government contractors seeking to fill positions that deal with sensitive workloads.

Raytheon said in a white paper that 72 percent of the 2,348 secret-level clearance requests the company filed with the government for newly hired employees from January 2016 through April 2017 had not been completed as of April.

“Many talented employment prospects simply decide to seek alternative employment, rather than wait for a clearance determination,” Raytheon said in the report.

“These departures not only undermine industry’s ability to recruit the best and brightest for government programs, they also impose additional costs to government programs as new candidates must be identified, hired, and resubmitted for clearances.”

NASA is looking into a Mars sample return mission that would collect Martian rocks and transport them to Earth in the late 2020s, Space News reported Monday.

Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said at a meeting of a National Academies committee that the sample return effort would involve the launch of a Mars ascent vehicle in 2026 to retrieve samples gathered by the earlier Mars 2020 mission.

The ascent vehicle would deploy the sample into Mars orbit, then a separately-launched spacecraft would capture the sample for a return to Earth or cislunar space.

NASA could use existing spacecraft in Mars orbit as a communications relay for the mission, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission and Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter.

Zurbuchen urged the committee to study the scientific importance of a Mars sample return and its potential impact on the future of the Mars program.