The Trump administration’s first big change to the Artemis program is a plan to deliver a 100kw nuclear fission reactor to the lunar surface by 2030, with the job done almost entirely by the private sector.
The project would be one of the largest tests of NASA’s commercial partnerships to date. Success would fulfill a long-held ambition for the US space community, enable sustainable lunar science and industry—and beat China and Russia to a geopolitically important lunar milestone.
Put together a team: Acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy issued a directive Monday that scraps the agency’s existing plans to develop Fission Surface Power (FSP). In its place, a new executive will be appointed within the Exploration Mission Systems Development Directorate to lead a small team equivalent to 15 full-time engineers.
The team’s job will be to hire two companies, potentially down-selecting to one. Each would design and build a 100kw nuclear reactor, capable of fitting in a 15-metric ton Moon lander, that could launch by late 2029. The directive orders the team to prioritize proposals where the reactor is integrated into its own lander.
Are you down with FSP? NASA was pursuing a plan to put nuclear power on the Moon long before Trump took office. In 2022, NASA hired contractors Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse, and IX—a joint venture of Intuitive Machines and X-energy—to design 40kw reactors for the Moon. A plan to solicit final designs was expected this year, but now energy will turn toward the new reactor concept.
“We’re really glad to see that this directive came out,” Lockheed VP Kevin Au, who leads the company’s lunar business, told Payload. “The United States has been investing in and working on nuclear space capabilities since the 50s, [but] we haven’t flown anything since 1965.”
Au said the 40kw reactor concept Lockheed has been developing for NASA would be ready for launch within the decade; the company’s engineers are now figuring out how to scale that design for a larger power output. The challenge, Au says, is less in building a small reactor than in heat management in space—and ensuring the safety of the reactor while it transits to the Moon.
ISRU: What’s driving the 100kw power requirement, according to Au, is in-situ resource utilization. Users will need energy on-hand to operate fleets of autonomous harvesters that can extract and refine resources, like oxygen and hydrogen, from water ice.
Red Alert: China and Russia have announced plans to jointly put a nuclear reactor on the Moon in the 2030s. Not only would this be a proper space first, but it could also present political issues. The legal framework on the Moon is loose, but gives precedence to safety exclusions; some analysts believe that a country operating a nuclear power plant could demand a large safety exclusion zone that might function as a territorial claim.
Can it be done? Bhavya Lal, who left her role as a NASA associate administrator in 2023, recently co-authored a paper that lays out the options to get a nuclear reactor to the lunar surface.
NASA’s new plan bears the most similarities to a scenario dubbed the “Chessmaster’s Gambit,” which assumes a Manhattan Project-style effort isn’t possible. The paper suggests it might cost $2B to get two demonstrator reactors built in five years, but it will require the agency to go all-in on with its commercial partners.
“A partial or hybridized model risks repeating past failures and jeopardizing the long-term viability of the space nuclear ecosystem,” the authors wrote.
