President Donald Trump has a big new ask of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The White House has ordered NASA, the Department of Energy, and the Pentagon to compete in designing nuclear reactors to be in the moon’s orbit by the end of Trump’s second term and on its surface by 2030.
Trump’s demand came in a memo sent to the agencies on Tuesday, four months after he signed an executive order outlining plans for nuclear power on the moon—a necessity for establishing a permanent moon base, expanding space exploration, and achieving “space superiority.”
The memo directs Hegseth, NASA, and the DOE to run design competitions “to enable near-term demonstration and use of low- to mid-power space reactors in orbit and on the lunar surface.”
If successful, NASA chief Jared Isaacman says it will be the next step toward sending humans to Mars.
“The clarity of nuclear power and propulsion policy in space is essential, because we want to ensure superiority even beyond the moon, when we get to Mars someday,” he said at a space policy event on Tuesday, according to the Scientific American.
The Pentagon referred the Daily Beast’s request for comment to the White House, which did not respond to an email.
Trump botched a softball question from Fox Business during a sit-down interview about future space travel, refusing to commit to saying the United States would beat China back to the moon.
“I don’t like to put myself in that position,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo. “If they beat us, they’ll say, ‘Oh, I said on Maria’s show...’ But we’re looking to have, we have a very good guy, Jared, who, you know, he’s doing a very good job as the head of NASA, very proud of him, and I think we’re probably winning. But I don’t want to get into that, because if they win, I don’t want you saying, ‘Oh, Trump was wrong. Trump was wrong. What a terrible thing.’”
The White House’s memo outlines its intentions regarding the tri-agency competition.
“The United States will lead the world in developing and deploying space nuclear power for exploration, commerce, and defense,” its memo reads. “Agencies will establish cost-effective partnerships with private-sector innovators to meet near-term objectives that include safely deploying nuclear reactors in orbit as early as 2028 and on the Moon as early as 2030.”
It adds that a successful project will “establish technological viability essential to unlocking space exploration, commerce, and defense applications.”
Nuclear capabilities in space could open a wide range of new opportunities.
Todd Harrison, a space policy and budget expert for the American Enterprise Institute, tells Defense One that the moon could even host data centers.
“You could run data centers in space, you could use it to power mission-critical systems that can never really go without power, like missile warning, strategic communications,” he said. “Directed energy, jamming, data centers, all of those things could use a lot of power.”
The White House’s memo ordered the Pentagon to brief it on its progress in 90 days—but some experts, including Harrison, believe the administration’s timeline to develop a microreactor in space may be too ambitious.
“The timeline and feasibility strikes me as rather aggressive,” he told Defense One. “Demonstrating a microreactor on Earth would be challenging by 2028; doing it in space is even more challenging.”
