Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy says it's time for the agency to focus on the moon and Mars, not the "smorgasbord of priorities," like climate science, the agency has been directing its resources.

In a bold, strategic move for the U.S., acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy announced plans on Aug. 5, 2025, to build a nuclear fission reactor for deployment on the lunar surface in 2030. Doing so would allow the United States to gain a foothold on the moon by the time China plans to land the first taikonaut,

The reactor would launch to the moon by 2030, according to a directive by acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy that was sent to NASA officials in July and obtained by NPR. It's an ambitious target that has some in the scientific community concerned about high costs and a potentially unrealistic schedule.

South Korea's K-RadCube satellite has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of its launch toward the moon on the Artemis 2 mission next year.

"Our society is built on technologies that are highly susceptible to space weather," said NASA's Heliophysics Division Director Joseph Westlake in the release. "Just as we use meteorology to forecast Earth's weather, space weather forecasts predict the conditions and events in the space environment that can affect Earth and our technologies."

Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has directed the agency to fast-track plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon.

NASA’s Artemis campaign is a bold series of missions to take humans back to the moon, and those astronauts will get there thanks to help from rocket engines mad

Over half a year into Trump's second term, NASA still doesn't have a leader. The space agency is staring down the barrel of some devastating cuts to its science budget, with the Trump administration betting its future on space exploration alone.