NASA’s nuclear Mars mission to cost over $2 billion – Politico
The price tag doesn’t include the cost of the science mission the new spacecraft would ferry to the Red Planet.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s ambitious plans to build a nuclear-powered spacecraft and fly it to Mars will cost over $2 billion, the agency confirmed this week.
The new cost estimate for the mission, dubbed Space Reactor-1 Freedom, comes as the agency juggles a number of high-profile missions — including returning humans to the Moon and building a lunar outpost — all while operating under what is expected to be a flat budget.
“Early cost estimates are approximately $2.1 billion, and NASA will continue refining that figure through the acquisition process,” the agency confirmed in a statement.
The agency plans to spend $640 million in fiscal 2026, $890 million in 2027, $415 million in 2028, and $180 million in 2029 on the program, according to a document sent to Congress and viewed by POLITICO. NASA will pull that money from the agency’s exploration account and from funding it received through the party-line reconciliation bill passed last year.
However, the document notes that the cost estimate does not include funding for SkyFall, the science mission that the new nuclear spacecraft will carry to Mars. NASA hasn’t released a cost estimate for SkyFall, but Mars researchers have warned it could cannibalize the agency’s science budget.
Since NASA announced the new Mars mission in March, few details have been released about the spacecraft. NASA’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which was released about a week after the announcement, did not include any money for the effort.
