WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has released a new executive order (EO) setting national space policy across the civil, commercial and defense sectors — setting a goal of establishing an “initial” Moon base by 2028 and reiterating the administration’s Golden Dome plans for a comprehensive air and missile defense shield over America.
Perhaps the most notable thing about the new EO is the title, “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” especially as the document focuses on civil space exploration rather than defense.
The phrase “space superiority” traditionally has served as a military term of art for controlling the heavens to prevent adversaries from taking actions to harm US space assets. The Space Force defines space superiority as follows: “A degree of that allows military forces in all domains to operate at a time and place of their choosing without prohibitive interference from space or counterspace threats, while also denying the same to an adversary.”
But the EO, published Thursday, is primarily centered around specific goals for NASA. For example, it states that America will return to the Moon by 2028, and mandates the establishment of “initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030” to include launching by nuclear reactors for use on the lunar surface.
It further calls for “enhancing sustainability and cost-effectiveness of launch and exploration architectures, including enabling commercial launch services and prioritizing lunar exploration.” Finally, it reiterates the US intention to abandon the International Space Station by 2030.
The policy’s three-paragraph section on security and the Defense Department’s role, by contrast, is more vague — and reflects current Pentagon policy.
First, it reiterates Trump’s January EO that launched the Pentagon’s Golden Dome, restating the goal to develop and demonstration “prototype next-generation missile defense technologies” by 2028.
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Second, it calls for “creating a responsive and adaptive national security space architecture by accelerating acquisition reform, integrating commercial space capabilities, and enabling new market entrants.”
Lastly, the security section states that the US will strengthen “ally and partner contributions to United States and collective space security, including through increased space security spending, operational cooperation, basing agreements, and ally and partner investments in America’s space industrial base.”
The EO gives Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 90 days, “in coordination with” the director of national intelligence and the head of the White House Office of Technology Policy, to report on “any technology, supply chain, or industrial capacity gaps relevant to this order’s directive to progressively and materially enhance America’s air and missile defenses, and plans for mitigating such gaps within available funding.”
Within 180 days, the Pentagon must “implement a space security strategy that accounts for United States interests in, from, and to space; addresses current and projected threats to United States space interests from very low-Earth orbit through cislunar space; and incorporates a technology plan for detecting, characterizing, and countering potential adversary placement of nuclear weapons in space.” (The United States has accused Russia of researching a space nuke to wipe out satellites in orbit.)
Also within that timeframe, DoD is to implement a plan for a “responsive and adaptive national security space architecture.” How that may differ, if at all, from the current Space Force architecture that has gradually been shifting from small constellations of large satellites in the geosynchronous Earth orbit belt some 36,000 kilometers above the surface to large constellations of small satellites in various orbits remains to be seen.
The EO also addresses commercial issues, most strikingly by the commitment to “attracting at least $50 billion of additional investment in American space markets by 2028” — although no detailed instructions are provided about how that it to be done.
The commercial section also makes a pledge for “increasing launch and reentry cadence through new and upgraded facilities, improved efficiency, and policy reforms.”
It also tasks the Secretary of Commerce to lead an initiative “to assert spectrum leadership, which shall include considering opportunities for reapportioning and sharing spectrum, as appropriate.” The document does not, however, explain what is meant by “spectrum leadership.”
Surprising no one, the EO kills the National Space Council, which ironically was last resuscitated in Trump’s first term. Industry and government officials have told Breaking Defense that unlike Trump’s first vice president Mike Pence, J.D. Vance has little interest in space issues and did not want the job of chairing the council.
The policy also seems to put a stake in the heart of another Trump 1 initiative already facing dismantlement due to budget cuts by the Office of Management and Budget: the Commerce Department effort to develop a civil space traffic management system. The Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) program was designed to take the burden of providing data on the whereabouts of space objects and warnings of potential on-orbit collisions to non-military operators.
The 2018 Space Policy Directive-3 states that a “basic” data and tracking services “should be available free of direct user fees.” The EO would change that language to read “available for commercial and other relevant use.” It is highly unclear whether any commercial space operator would be willing to pay the government for such services.