COLORADO SPRINGS — The Trump administration today published a new strategy to bring nuclear power to the heavens through a cooperative effort between civil and military authorities could see the Pentagon demonstrate an orbital reactor in as few as five years, according to a White House memo.
Unveiled today at the Space Symposium conference here by Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, the National Initiative for American Space Nuclear Power effectively implements an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in December aimed at achieving American dominance in space.
“Nuclear power in space will give us the sustained electricity, heating and propulsion essential to a permanent robotic and eventually human presence on the moon, on Mars and beyond,” Kratsios said today. “Executing on the President’s National Space Strategy will require a whole of government approach, as well as the drive and ingenuity of America’s private space industry.”
Additionally, Kratsios noted that the upcoming National Space Transportation Policy “will incentivize private sector partners to co-invest in launch infrastructure.”
The memo published today [PDF] says that space nuclear power will be the subject of “high-level focus and attention” from the executive branch “to enable a path that is both ambitious and achievable.” That includes cooperation with the private sector and the “efficient use” of existing resources.
Key to the new strategy, according to the memo, is NASA and the Defense Department “conduct[ing] parallel and mutually reinforcing … design competitions” that can pave the way to demonstrations and eventual fielding of “low- to mid-power space reactors in orbit and on the lunar surface.” The two agencies will also work towards “deploy[ing] high-power reactors in the 2030s,” the memo says.
While NASA is assigned responsibilities like initiating the development of a “mid-power space reactor with a lunar fission surface power (FSP) variant ready for launch by 2030,” the Pentagon will have tasks of its own. Specifically, the memo says that “pending availability of funding,” the DoD will “pursue deployment of a mission-enabling mid-power in-space reactor by 2031” — essentially an orbital nuclear reactor.
For the first year under the strategy, DoD will “contribute its available space nuclear funding” for NASA efforts that could “enable” future Pentagon missions, according to the memo. Beginning in the second year, DoD would then be directed to carry “at least two competing vendors” through “at least preliminary design review and ground tests” for the future mid-power orbital reactor.
The memo encourages the DoD to collect proposals from vendors already working with NASA on related technologies and states that the Pentagon “should have the option” to select any qualified vendors from NASA programs for fission surface power or nuclear electric power if DoD “program participants fail to meet appropriate programmatic and technical milestones.”
Ideally, learnings from low- and mid-power reactors could eventually culminate in a high-powered reactor that NASA could have ready for launch in the 2030s. The memo defines a high-powered reactor as a system that provides “at least 100″ kilowatts of elecrical power.
The memo explicitly lists several tools for program managers, including firm fixed-price contracts, vendor proposals for milestones and the establishment of government use rights. The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy is expected to develop a “roadmap” for the overarching space strategy within 90 days, which will address potential “obstacles” and ways to overcome them.
The new strategy comes amid a burgeoning space race, most recently exemplified by the Artemis II mission that sent American astronauts on a successful slingshot around the moon. American officials hope they can keep ahead of adversaries like China and Russia who also harbor space and lunar ambitions, including the establishment of a moon base.
Leveraging previous efforts could help shape the path ahead. For example, while the memo says NASA’s funding to develop nuclear thermal propulsion should focus on aspects like common components that could benefit other space nuclear programs, nuclear thermal propulsion itself could be an “option for future crewed missions to Mars.”
Notably, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency killed a program for a nuclear thermal propulsion demonstrator last year, but insights from the project could theoretically inform fresh efforts under the White House’s new space strategy.
