WASHINGTON, March 14 (Reuters) - NASA on Friday said it

received a one-week deadline extension to submit its plans for

mass layoffs to the top U.S. personnel agency given the number

of high-priority space missions the agency is grappling with

this month.

Federal agencies faced a deadline of late in the week to

turn in plans for workforce reductions and reorganizations, the

latest phase of Elon Musk and the Trump administration's

sweeping effort to trim back the federal bureaucracy.

"Considering a variety of agency priorities this week,

including the launch of SPHEREx and PUNCH, as well as

preparations for NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 launch Friday, and other

agency missions, the agency received a one-week extension on our

initial submission," a NASA spokesperson said.

NASA and SpaceX have a high-profile launch of four

astronauts to the International Space Station on Friday in a

mission that will allow the return of Butch Wilmore and Suni

Williams, two veteran astronauts who have been stuck on the

station since last summer because of problems with Boeing's ( BA )

Starliner spacecraft.

The Trump administration's deadline extension for NASA is

the latest temporary reprieve for the space agency from mass

layoff efforts, after firings of probationary employees in an

earlier phase last month were abruptly averted at the eleventh

hour.

Hundreds

of NASA employees have taken the Trump administration's

buyout offer, a White House effort to encourage employee

departures that is being

challenged in court

. And the U.S. space agency this week

terminated three offices

, including its Chief Scientist role, which led to layoffs

of 23 staff of its workforce of roughly 18,000.

Looming additional layoffs and plans to

substantially reshape NASA

, according to agency employees, have triggered unease among

many workers at an agency focused heavily on high-stakes

missions with astronauts in Earth's orbit, private companies

landing

on the

moon

and advanced research into the origins of life and our

solar system.

The launch on Friday, NASA's Crew-10 mission, has

faced pressure

from President

Donald Trump

and his adviser Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, to launch quickly

in order to return from space Wilmore and Williams, whose

drawn-out mission Trump has blamed on former President Joe Biden

without evidence.

The Crew-10 mission will fly two U.S. astronauts, as

well as one from Japan and another from Russia. Their arrival

later on Saturday will allow Wilmore and Williams to return to

Earth since they had their

Starliner

test trip turned into a full-duration mission on the ISS.

Propulsion system issues during Starliner's June flight

to the orbital laboratory - its first with a crew on board -

forced NASA to

decide

last year to

bring the capsule back empty

, and have Wilmore and Williams return to Earth with a

different crew this month using SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.