Set Course for 2028, Maximum Impulse: Trump Space Order Targets Artemis Moon Landing and More
“Ensuring American Space Superiority” includes a push for Golden Dome missile defense and developing nuclear power deployment capabilities.
I recently reported that billionaire entrepreneur and “Polaris” astronaut Jared Isaacman officially took the helm at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Isaacman’s plans include lunar landings, Mars missions, and more private-public partnerships for America’s space goals.
Now, President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order that pairs well with Isaacman’s confirmation. Trump’s new “Ensuring American Space Superiority” plans lay out a broad, long‑term strategy that includes getting American astronauts to the Moon by 2028.
President Donald Trump enshrined the U.S. goal to put humans back on the moon by 2028 and defend space from weapon threats in a sweeping executive order issued on Thursday, the first major space policy move of his administration’s second term.
The order, issued hours after billionaire private astronaut and former SpaceX customer Jared Isaacman was sworn in as NASA’s 15th administrator, also reorganized national space policy coordination under Trump’s chief science adviser, Michael Kratsios.
Titled “ENSURING AMERICAN SPACE SUPERIORITY,” the order calls on the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies to create a space security strategy, urges efficiency among private contractors and seeks demonstrations of missile-defense technologies under Trump’s Golden Dome program.
#ICYMI The President signed an Executive Order titled "Ensuring American Space Superiority," outlining U.S. policy priorities to protect national interests in space, extend the reach of human discovery, & lay the foundation for a new space age.
👉https://t.co/zY5KqZtYWy pic.twitter.com/Dtelt6u18R— U.S. Space Command (@US_SpaceCom) December 19, 2025
Legal Insurrection readers may recall my reports related to Trump’s plans for “Golden Dome” missile defense. The most recent coverage noted Lockheed Martin is preparing to conduct an on‑orbit test of a space‑based anti‑missile interceptor win a 2028 timeframe.
There has been progress in this program as well. Lockheed Martin and other companies were awarded the first contracts to develop boost phase space-based interceptors for Golden Dome.
Northrop Grumman, Anduril, Lockheed Martin and True Anomaly were awarded the first contracts to develop boost phase space-based interceptors for Golden Dome, SatNews reported in a Dec. 11 article. These awards were valued between $9 and $10 million per company.
SatNews believes Anduril receiving an award along with traditional primes Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin demonstrates the DOW’s “buy vs. build” procurement strategy for Golden Dome. This should deprioritize the strict multi-year cycles found in traditional defense contracting in favor of speed and innovation preferred under the second Trump administration.
These prototypes will compete for production contracts in coming years that could be worth billions of dollars.
How much thrust does it take for a rocket goinng 60 mph versus 0 mph?
Inertia?Space-based missile-killing Golden Dome tech aims for crucial test before Trump leaves office: Lockheed Martin
https://t.co/OEVJzwIDcC #FoxNews— Kurt Grossman (@genergy1) December 11, 2025
Returning to the news related to Trump’s new executive order includes an emphasis on nuclear power.
“Ensuring American Space Superiority” lists as a priority the deployment of nuclear reactors in Earth orbit and on the moon, and states that one such facility should be ready to launch toward the lunar surface by 2030.
These goals aren’t terribly surprising. For example, NASA is already working toward a 2028 crewed moon landing via its Artemis program, which also aims to set up one or more bases near the lunar south pole over the ensuing years.
The agency has also been developing a potential fission reactor for use on the moon for several years now, with the goal of deploying it in the early 2030s. And a few months ago, we got wind of the more aggressive 2030 timeline for this power source, via a directive from then-NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy.
However, among all these goals, perhaps the most eagerly awaited one is the Artemis mission to land a team on the Moon. The objective will be to complete this action item before Trump’s second term ends.
The Artemis program began in the first Trump Administration with the goal of getting Americans back on the Moon by 2024. Viewed by most as unrealistic, the date for the landing on Artemis III unsurprisingly slipped to 2027 during Biden’s term. Setbacks with development of SpaceX’s Starship, which will serve as the Human Landing System (HLS) to get astronauts down to and back from the surface, began casting doubt on that date, too. Republicans and Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are united in their determination to get Americans back on the Moon before China puts taikonauts there, which it plans to do by 2030.
Whether the EO’s date of 2028 is achievable remains to be seen, but Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who has been dual-hatted as Acting NASA Administrator until today, recently vowed that Americans would be on the Moon before Trump’s term ends on January 20, 2029. Duffy reopened the HLS contract to determine if there’s any other company that can develop a lander sooner, but it’s a tall order.
In conclusion, “Ensuring American Space Superiority” is an ambitious long-term strategy to keep our nation leading in space exploration, security, and commerce, with Artemis and a 2028 crewed moon landing as centerpiece goals. It links lunar return, future lunar outposts, and eventual Mars missions to national strength and prosperity, while also pushing for faster national security space capabilities and a thriving commercial space sector.
May Artemis boldly go, land, and return safely, so humanity can take its next giant leap into the final frontier. https://t.co/jshPlDDXMT
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) December 19, 2025
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Comments
The original Apollo program achieved a moon landing 8 years after President Kennedy’s announcement, however, the current Artemis program is currently projected to reach that goal in 11 years (from 2017 to 2028).
That’s because:
a. technology was more advanced 50 years ago than it is today.
b. we really didn’t go to the moon
c. there was no DEI in the 1960’s
d. where there’s a will there’s a way
e. ______________________________________
e. Federal judges busy drafting 78 “prime directives.”
e. The USA was still America: yes! It could, and did, do whatever it set its mind to doing. We were not a nation apologizing to the rest of the world for our mere existence, and we were not. nation of self-doubt. We were also a merit-based society. Women and “minorities” were represented in various programs and fields if they had merit. (I don’t want to hear any nonsense about them being locked out.)
It is note nonsense. I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s.
You probably have no idea what it meant to be a female vs male. When we were kids, things seemed fairly equal but as we, females got older, doors were definitely closed
I couldn’t even take a woodwork class when I was in 7th grade, I was told I couldn’t because I was a girl by the school. They put me in cooking class, with all the other girls whose dreams were clearly being stifled on a daily basis.
Despite being in AP classes in HS, I was encouraged to get married and drink 2 martinis a day, by my HS counselor .He informed me his wife did
I told him if I was married to him, I would be drinking a great deal more.
They made a movie about the black female math genius that were led by Katherine Johnson, a brilliant NASA mathematician known as a “human computer” whose orbital mechanics calculations were vital for missions like Freedom 7, Apollo 11, and John Glenn’s orbit, breaking barriers for women and women in general
Heady Lamar wasn’t recognized for her frequency hopping” communication system she invented during WWII with composer George Antheil, for decades, a technology that became a foundation for modern Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
It’s was extremely hard for women to open doors .
Hell, they wouldn’t let me open a checking account when I got a job as a teen ager with out a males consent
But feminist of today I can not join them because they are not real feminists, seem
More like left winged borderline personalities to me.
Here they are not making peeps about the way women in the Middle East are treated , as slaves, allowed to be murdered if they insult the husband or son as a honor killing
They march with the terrorists cause it cool.
They disgust me.
The SLS is a complete boondoggle.
The US Senate mandated a use of space shuttle technology to keep current facilities in different states open.
Cost estimates range from 1 billion to 4 billion PER LAUNCH!!!!
That is billion with a “b”
This does not include development costs.
This is clearly not sustainable.
An alternative approach is needed.
Perhaps reliance on Space X and its new giant Starship rocket is preferable.
Cost estimates are about 2 million per launch
We are spending way too much money way too fast on things with questionable return.
Example: We’re going to the moon because China is.
Example: Expensive space based defense capability that can probably be spoofed and/or overwhelmed.
Example: Retiring f-22 because it is expensive to fly in favor of yet another new generation plane that will be expensive to fly.
Example: Yet another new small frigate design based upon a cutter design after the failure of the last frigate design, the last desttoyer design, and the last littoral combat ship design.
Sorry I’m not as good with domestic examples but frankly I;m not seeing major saving there either. All I see is spending more.
Spending is okay. Spending more is okay.
It’s wasting money that is bad, and going to the moon is essentially a waste if the only reason for doing so is to get there AGAIN before China gets there.
However, if there is a real need, fine.
I’d like to give you 50 upticks.
Another moon mission is just weenie-wagging. There is no real benefit, and, we can’t afford it.
Don’t get me wrong. I love space flight. Grew up on it. However it seems to me this is something we can primarily do with allies, or even adversaries. Or leave it up to the private sector if there is a buck to be made.
I’m talking about man spaceflight here by the way.
It’s a shame really because it is an endeavor that inspires people, or at least me.
“Example: We’re going to the moon because China is.”
We’re going to the moon because it’s cheaper to launch from the moon.
Suppose the Chicoms get to the Moon and even build a base there ahead of the US and everyone else. Then what? A base on the Moon has no military value compared to LEO. The Moon does not have much in the way of valuable raw materials, so many things needed to sustain human life would have to be brought from Earth. Because a lunar base sits in the lunar gravity well it is of little help in building and sending crewed spacecraft to Mars and beyond.
About all a Chicom lunar landing and crewed base would do would be to serve as another dreary talking point about the supposed advantages of Communism – and academia, Hollywood and the American media already churns those out by the ton on a daily basis.
It does have valuable resources and it is easier to get to than asteroids.
It might well have military value. I’ve read about it a little but I;m not in any position to compare and contrast the moon with the alternatives,
There is no evidence the Moon has any ore deposits like those found on Earth (this is because of the significant differences between the geological forces found on the Earth compared to the Moon). This would present a huge challenge to building and maintaining any permanent lunar bases. The technology needed for the economic extraction of materials directly from lunar regolith (which is rich in certain elements and poor in others compared to Earth) does not exist yet. As an engineer I am suspicious of any plan or system that depends on quantum leaps in technology to make it work. Those leaps may or may not happen. In-situ use of lunar resources to build and maintain permanent lunar bases is a not-yet-realized dream.
Even if such technology could be developed the first lunar bases would still be dependent on raw materials from Earth for some time, an extremely expensive proposition. Then there is the harsh lunar environment. We have experience building structures in LEO (which has some conditions similar to the Moon) but we have never built them on the lunar surface.
There is one more huge problem working against long-term space exploration. Successfully expanding humanity to the Moon and beyond requires a rich, politically stable environment. Yet the US and Europe seem to be teetering on the brink of dictatorship. It is hard to build and sustain lunar bases when the top priority of government officials is to smash their jackboots in our collective faces.
I’m not sure we ever flew to the moon. I believed it as a kid amd it InSpired millions of creative people to make extraordinary products that better our everyday lives.
Our “allies “ across the pond have no interest in going to the moon . They are in the grasps of Islam unfortunately and more broke than we are.
I would love if we explored the seven seas, deep into the deep unknown. I can’t even imagine the beauty we would find and the application of the products to do so for all of us
I just don’t want the humans to destroy the depths of the ocean and the marine animals that live there.
We are a greedy bunch
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