NASA Puts $2B Price Tag on Nuclear Mars Mission
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NASA Puts $2B Price Tag on Nuclear Mars Mission

  • 2026-07-23

NASA announced that its nuclear spacecraft bound for Mars will cost over $2B.

The mission—dubbed Space Reactor-1 (SR-1) Freedom—is targeting a launch in late 2028, and is said to be the first fission-powered interplanetary spacecraft. It will also ferry SkyFall, NASA’s next Mars helicopter mission, to scout landing sites for future crewed exploration on the Red Planet.

The $2B question: SR-1 was first announced at NASA’s Ignition event in March as the standout Mars mission amid the agency’s upgraded lunar focus. The agency has since been nailing down funding for its biggest bet yet on nuclear propulsion.

At a June meeting of the National Academies’ Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, Associate Administrator of the Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate Lori Glaze said funding will pull from NASA’s FY27 budget request as well as the 2025 Working Families Tax Cut Act, which included $2.6B for the now-paused Gateway lunar orbiting space station.

A document sent to Congress and viewed by POLITICO proposes the following mission budget:

$640M in FY26$890M in FY27$415M in FY28$180M in FY29

This budget does not include funding for SkyFall, and it’s unclear how NASA will reshuffle already-allocated funding—or how it will fold SR-1 into FY27 appropriations. Still, officials insist they’ll find the money.

Let the SkyFall: SR-1 will carry NASA’s next Mars choppers: SkyFall, which is managed by JPL and has AeroVironment co-designing and co-manufacturing the helicopters. Firefly also recently won a $13M subcontract to build the landing aeroshell.

SkyFall is even more ambitious than its ingenious predecessor: Ingenuity 

SR-1 will release SkyFall in Mars orbit, where the entry vehicle will enter the Martian atmosphere and deploy its helicopters mid-air.After landing, the choppers will map subsurface ice and scout landing sites for future crewed missions.SkyFall adds payload capacity and range, and needs no rover for comms relay (sorry, Percy).

NASA has yet to disclose where exactly it will gather funds to develop SkyFall. However, the agency said funding would partly come from the science directorate’s line of future Mars missions, despite researchers warning SkyFall could cannibalize the agency’s science budget.

Waste not: NASA hopes to maintain schedule and budget by reusing hardware.

Gateway’s repurposed Power and Propulsion Element will serve as the SR-1 spacecraft.NASA is partnering with the Department of Energy to design and assemble the mission, leveraging the national labs’ expertise.

“We’re trying to leverage as much as we can, with as little new development as possible,” Glaze told the board. “I know that’s a challenge and always sounds good on paper, but that’s the intent.”

Board members were skeptical of the timeline. One noted that a two-year development schedule is more typical of a cubesat than a nuclear interplanetary spacecraft. Glaze conceded the point: “It is ambitious. It’s a challenge,” she said, but insisted NASA is doing everything it can to rise to the occasion.

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