President Donald Trump laid out a clear vision—and timeline—for America’s next steps in space in an executive order signed Thursday afternoon.
The “Ensuring American Space Superiority” executive order says that achievements in space are “a measure of national vision and willpower.”
“The United States must therefore pursue a space policy that will extend the reach of human discovery, secure the nation’s vital economic and security interests, unleash commercial development, and lay the foundation for a new space age,” the order reads.
The order replaces one signed by former President Joe Biden in 2021 that authorized the National Space Council, marking the end of the interagency panel that was never revived in Trump’s second term.
Top priorities: Many points in the EO should come as no surprise—it’s clear, for example, that Trump wants to send Americans to the Moon and build a space-based missile defense constellation.
The document, however, sets concrete dates by which the US will hit certain milestones in civil, national-security, and commercial space, including:
- Putting Americans on the Moon by 2028, and building “initial elements” of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030.
- Demonstrating a prototype for Golden Dome by 2028, and making sure the US can detect threats in space from LEO to cislunar orbits.
- Attracting an additional $50B in investment in US space markets by 2028.
- Building a nuclear reactor to generate power on the lunar surface, which would be ready to launch by 2030.
- Ensuring the private sector has a “pathway” to replace the ISS with a commercial space station in LEO by 2030.
Not so squishy: Attaching numbers and dates to goals gives a sense of urgency—and a hard benchmark against which the administration can be measured for failure and success.
The EO lays out a couple short-term steps to kick off action:
- Drafting a plan by mid-February, to establish a National Initiative for American Space Nuclear Power.
- Delivering a readout to Trump by mid-March with a NASA plan to hit these goals, a review of any space-acquisition projects that are more than 30% behind schedule or 30% over cost (from the acquisition baseline), and a DoD evaluation of gaps in the space and missile defense supply chain.
What’s in a name? Though the document is an executive order, it bears a striking resemblance to the Space Policy Directives that became a hallmark of Trump’s first term. The president signed seven SPDs between 2017 and 2021 that addressed everything from establishing the Space Force, to streamlining regulations for the private space sector.
