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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 19/08/2026

Jared's hobby rocket does not have much support among planetary scientists. Nobody asked for it. NEP was barely more than a footnote in the Decadal. Also, nobody asked for Skyfall. It appears to exist only to give the NEP demo something charismatic to carry. It won't do meaningful science.

“What keeps me awake at night is, in three years’ time, will we have a space nuclear program?” asked Bhavya Lal, former NASA associate administrator for technology, policy and strategy and the co-author of a 2025 study that looked at the long, troubled history of space nuclear programs.

Space nuclear programs enjoy strong support today, she said, “but this support is positional, not structural. It is attached to people and not to paper. So, what happens in January 2029?”

That is an issue for SR-1, which she said is a program without a clear customer. It is carrying a technology demonstration payload, a set of Mars helicopters called SkyFall, but she noted those could fly on a different mission. The LR-1 lunar reactor program is also not directly dependent on SR-1. “The only thing that truly needs SR-1 is SR-2, SR-3 and SR-4, and those don’t exist.”

Members of the MEPAG community,
There have been deeply concerning developments in the NASA MEP budget and proposed federal R&A
funding policy in the last several weeks that many of you may not be aware of and have arguably worse
consequences than last year’s budget threat. If there was ever a time to take action in support of the Mars
Exploration Program and federally-funded scientific research, now is that time.
MEP status: The Mars Exploration Program has been directed to absorb and manage the Skyfall payload
on the Space Reactor-1 (SR-1) demonstration mission within its budget. This will largely be under the
Mars Future Missions line, effectively eliminating any new developments/missions until after SR-1/Sky-
fall launches. It is also anticipated that the costs for Skyfall will exceed the available funding in that line
($110M), which means that without a budget augmentation in FY27, the chances are quite high that more
than one currently operating mission at Mars will be terminated and their funds redirected to supporting
Skyfall.

SpaceNews @spacenewsinc.bsky.social

Space nuclear programs face near- and long-term challenges While space nuclear programs are “having a moment,” industry officials say they face near-term challenges as well as longer-term concerns....

spacenews.com

Space nuclear programs face near- and long-term challenges

While space nuclear programs are “having a moment,” industry officials say they face near-term challenges as well as longer-term concerns.

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