WASHINGTON — NASA is moving ahead with plans to support development of a lunar nuclear power system with an emphasis on commercialization.
On Aug. 29, the agency released a draft Announcement for Partnership Proposals, or AFPP, for its Fission Surface Power initiative to gather industry input for the final version.
The AFPP is designed to implement a policy directive signed July 31 by Acting Administrator Sean Duffy that seeks to accelerate work on nuclear power systems for the moon. The directive calls for a reactor capable of producing at least 100 kilowatts of power that would be ready for launch by the end of 2029.
NASA plans to pursue the effort through public-private partnerships using funded Space Act Agreements. While the directive called for selecting two companies, the draft AFPP states NASA can choose “one, multiple or none” of the proposals.
The draft provides few new details about NASA’s requirements. One, restated from the directive, is that the system use a closed Brayton cycle power conversion system — a signal, industry officials said, that NASA wants the technology to scale to higher-power systems.
The reactor would operate in the lunar south polar region for at least 10 years. A cover letter accompanying the draft seeks input on issues including cybersecurity, physical security and reactor fuel.
Under the Space Act Agreement structure, the company would own the reactor and sell power to NASA and other customers. The AFPP requires proposers to submit a financing plan “showing how cash from operations, financing, and NASA covers the expenses of the total end-to-end deployment of the FSP system.”
Proposers must also provide a “Commercial Lunar Power Business Plan” outlining the strategy, potential customers and market size. “The market should include or leverage customers other than NASA,” the draft states.
That approach also extends to delivery. Companies may propose that NASA land the reactor on the moon, if it weighs no more than 15,000 kilograms. But the AFPP says companies “that propose a wholly commercial approach to the end-to-end deployment, all other things being equal, will receive higher-rated proposal evaluations.”
The draft does not state how much funding NASA expects to provide but says the final version, due no later than Oct. 3, will include that information. Awards are expected by March 2026.
The directive followed a report commissioned by the Idaho National Laboratory that recommended accelerating space nuclear power development. One option in that report called for building a reactor of at least 100 kilowatts through traditional contracts; another proposed public-private partnerships for reactors of 10 to 100 kilowatts.
NASA’s blended approach is a “risky combination,” said Bhavya Lal, a former NASA associate administrator for technology, policy and strategy and a co-author of the report, in a SpaceNews webinar Aug. 28.
“It means doing a whole lot of first-of-its-kind things at once,” she said, from reactor design to a launch authorization process that has never been used.
What is helping the initiative, she said, is “a new sense of strategic urgency,” citing Chinese and Russian proposals for a megawatt-class lunar reactor. “This urgency is what finally makes space nuclear real because it turns what used to be a discretionary technology into a strategic imperative.”
“For me,” she said, “success is a commercial space nuclear sector that endures.”