U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is expected to announce a sped-up timeline this week to build a nuclear reactor on the moon.
This will be his first major action since President Donald Trump named him interim NASA administrator in June.
Documents obtained by POLITICO show that Duffy’s directive establishes “a more definitive timeline” for the plan, which has been floated by NASA officials previously.
Some have expressed concerns with additional spending just as the agency faces a massive budget cut, but Scientific American writer Lee Billings says it could be a “strategic lunar land grab.”
“Ownership of otherworldly territory is prohibited, according to the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, but the treaty also obliges spacefaring powers to exercise ‘due regard’ in their activities, meaning that they should not encroach on or interfere with sensitive infrastructure built by others,” Billings writes.
“A nuclear reactor placed on the lunar surface, therefore, could allow the declaration of what Duffy’s directive calls a ‘keep-out zone.’”
This would foil what Billings calls a “burgeoning partnership” between China and Russia to build a nuclear-powered outpost near the moon’s south pole by the mid-2030s.
“It is about winning the second space race,” an anonymous NASA senior official told POLITICO this week ahead of the plan’s release.
Duffy’s proposal also aims to speed up replacement of the International Space Station, which could help the U.S. reach the moon and Mars before China, according to NASA officials.
A former congressman and prosecutor, Duffy first gained fame by appearing on several MTV reality television programs, including 1997’s The Real World: Boston; Road Rules: All Stars (1998); and Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Seasons (2002). He has also worked as a political commentator for CNN and for Fox News.
Duffy served in the U.S. House as Republican representative for Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District from 2011 to 2019. Before Congress, he was district attorney in rural Ashland County, Wis., from 2002-2010.
In Congress, Duffy sat on the House financial services committee – where he was chairman of the oversight and investigations subcommittee — and on the House budget committee.
An AL.com review of Duffy’s record in Congress shows he did not sponsor or cosponsor a single bill directly related to NASA or space policy.
Duffy has been noted as a “stark contrast” to Trump’s first pick to head NASA, Jared Isaacman.
Isaacman, founder and CEO of the credit card payment processing company Shift4 Payments, was a close ally of Elon Musk, having twice purchased flights into space aboard the latter’s SpaceX rockets.
Trump withdrew Isaacman’s nomination shortly after the president had a public falling out with Musk as well as revelations that Isaacman had previously donated to causes related to both Democrats and Republicans.
Administration spokeswoman Liz Huston previously told NBC News, “it’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda.”
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