The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a leading center for robotic space exploration run by NASA and Caltech, announced layoffs of around 325 employees, about 5 percent of its workforce. This comes after JPL previously cut 8 percent of its staff this past February because of budget constraints.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has laid-off an additional 325 workers after an earlier round of 500 job cuts earlier in the year, largely because of budgetary constraints.

JPL, which was founded in 1936 by California Institute of Technology researchers, already went through one round of mass layoffs earlier this year in an effort to reduce costs. In February, JPL cut 530 jobs, which was about 8% of its then-workforce, and laid off 40 contractors.