A safety engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center is raising money online for federal employees struggling to pay their bills ahead of their first missed paycheck Friday.

Johanna Petrocelli, who has worked at the Houston center since 2014, started her GoFundMe page Monday. She had raised $1,302 as of Thursday morning, surpassing her goal of $1,000.

"I'm a federal employee in Houston, TX and I just want to help my fellow community," Petrocelli wrote. "So I set up this GoFundMe as a means to help anyone (affected) by the furlough pay specifically for medical/child care/animal care bills."

ALL THINGS NASA: The science and finance behind the organization covered daily at HoustonChronicle.com.

Petrocelli's online fundraising comes as the federal government shutdown approaches the three-week mark. Just 200 of the 3,055 federal employees at Johnson are still working -- primarily to keep the three astronauts aboard the space station alive -- because of the shutdown that started Dec. 22.

As President Donald Trump holds firm on his demand that Congress fund a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, about 16,700 space agency personnel — or 96 percent of the workforce — across the nation are impacted.

'I'M JUST DRAINED': Federal employees in Houston squeezed as payday comes without paycheck

Petrocelli was not available for comment Thursday, but her GoFundMe page states that she will provide money to federal workers who contact her for help.

"My plan is to withdraw the funds once we reach the goal and transfer it to every federal employee who reaches out to this campaign requesting a need for money (pending confirmation of the federal employee/contractor status)," she wrote.

Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey.

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