“There’s now policy certainty that we didn’t have before,” she adds. “Last but not least, the private sector is not only interested in using space nuclear power, they’re even interested in providing space nuclear power.” Both startups and established aerospace companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin are researching the use of nuclear power in space. “There’s a lot of puzzle pieces that have come together in a good way, where we can actually move.”
NASA’s Artemis program is supposed to lay the groundwork for a permanent base at the lunar South Pole and pioneer technologies to move on to Mars, though its future is uncertain. Regardless, the energy needs of any crewed missions in exotic environments like the moon, where nights last two weeks and temperatures wildly fluctuate, necessitate steady and abundant power.
“Lunar gravity and thermal swings are brutal,” Lal says. “Daytime temperatures are about 100 degrees Celsius. Nighttime is close to absolute zero. All the electronics must be radiation hardened. Although, I’ll be honest, the biggest risks are not technical. The biggest risk is maintaining that momentum and the mission goal.”
Enter China, which is also planning a moon base at the South Pole. This region is rich in resources and water ice, which makes it an attractive site for exploration and a potential permanent presence, and China is in talks with Russia to partner on building a reactor there by 2035. These developments have galvanized officials at NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy to get into the race.
“It could be done, because we do very well here in the US when we have a strong adversary, and we haven’t had one for 40 years,” says Mohamed El-Genk, a professor of nuclear engineering and founding director of the Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies at the University of New Mexico. “But a lot of things need to be worked out for that to happen.”
How Would This All Work?
Duffy’s directive included few details about the design or scale of the planned reactor, and it’s anyone’s guess what concepts might emerge in the coming months.
“To further advance US competition and lunar surface leadership under the Artemis campaign, NASA is moving quickly to advance fission surface power development,” said Bethany Stevens, press secretary at NASA Headquarters, in an email to WIRED. “This critical technology will support lunar exploration, provide high-power energy generation on Mars, and strengthen our national security in space. Among efforts to advance development, NASA will designate a new program executive to manage this work, as well as issue a Request for Proposal to industry within 60 days. NASA will release additional details about this proposal in the future.”
The directive echoes the findings of a recent report on space nuclear power, coauthored by Lal and aerospace engineer Roger Myers, which included a “Go Big or Go Home” option to build a 100-kW reactor on the moon by 2030.
This 100-kW design would be “roughly equivalent to sending a couple adult African elephants to the moon with a fold-out umbrella the size of a basketball court, except the elephants produce heat and that umbrella isn’t for shade, it’s for dumping heat into space,” Lal said in a follow-up email to WIRED.
NASA Accelerates Plans for Lunar Nuclear Reactor by 2030
NASA is fast-tracking a plan to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030 under a new directive from the agency’s interim administrator Sean Duffy.
The plan revives a decades-old dream of scaling up nuclear power in space, a shift that would unlock futuristic possibilities and test legal and regulatory guidelines about the use of extraterrestrial resources and environments.
New Space Race With China and Russia
Duffy, who also serves as President Donald Trump’s secretary of transportation, framed being first to put a reactor on the lunar surface as a must-win contest in a new moon race. “Since March 2024, China and Russia have announced on at least three occasions a joint effort to place a reactor on the Moon by the mid-2030s,” said Duffy in the directive, which is dated July 31.
“The first country to do so could potentially declare a keep-out zone which would significantly inhibit the United States from establishing a planned Artemis presence if not there first,” he added, referring to NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land humans on the moon in the coming years.
Ambitious Technical Specifications
The directive laid out a roadmap to design, launch, and deploy an operational 100-kilowatt reactor to the lunar South Pole within five years that would be built with commercial partners (for comparison, 100-kilowatts could power about 80 American households). While the specs are speculative at this point, 100 kilowatts represents a dramatic power boost compared to the basic nuclear generators that fuel Mars rovers and space probes, which typically operate on just a few hundred watts, equivalent to a toaster or a light bulb.
Transformative Potential for Space Exploration
The implications would be transformative, “not just for the moon, but for the entire solar system,” says Bhavya Lal, who previously served as NASA’s associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy and acting chief technologist. Placing a nuclear reactor on the moon would allow the space industry to “start designing space systems around what we want to do, not what small amounts of power allow us to do. It’s the same leap that occurred when Earth-based societies moved from candlelight to grid electricity.”
Feasibility of the 2030 Timeline
Establishing a nuclear plant on the moon by 2030 won’t be easy, but many experts believe it is within reach.
“Four-and-a-bit years is a very racy timescale” but “the technology is there,” says Simon Middleburgh, a professor in nuclear materials and co-director of the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University in the UK.
The issue up to this point hasn’t necessarily been technological readiness, but a lack of mission demand for off-Earth reactors or political incentives to strong-arm their completion. That calculus is now shifting.
Historical Context and Recent Developments
“We’ve been investing over 60 years and have spent tens of billions of dollars, and the last time we launched anything was 1965,” says Lal, referring to NASA’s SNAP-10A mission, which was the first nuclear reactor launched to space. “I think the big moment of change was last year, when NASA actually, for the first time in its history ever, selected nuclear power as the primary surface power generation technology for crewed missions to Mars.”
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