US Plans Nuclear Reactor on the Moon—Here’s What to Know

NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy wants a small fission reactor ready to go to the moon by 2030.

A full moon is seen behind the Artemis I Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher at Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 14, 2022. Cory Huston/NASA via AP

NASA has been tasked with adding nuclear power to its future lunar base by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

“We’re able to build a base,” Duffy, NASA’s acting administrator, told members of the press on Aug. 5. “But this is critically important. There’s a certain part of the moon that everyone knows is the best. We have ice there. We have sunlight there. We want to get there first and claim that for America. And to do this is, this part of the fission technology is critically important to sustain life, because solar won’t do it.”