Would be nice if we spent some of the wasted $120 billion on this..

NASA’s nuclear Mars mission to cost over $2 billion

The price tag doesn't include the cost of the science mission the new spacecraft would ferry to the Red Planet.

By Audrey Decker

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.

The mission, which aims to launch in late 2028, would be the first flight demonstration of nuclear electric propulsion. The spacecraft aims to deliver three helicopters to the Red Planet to collect scientific data and identify potential water sources.

Agency officials have said they plan to use existing hardware to build the spacecraft on the accelerated timeline. NASA will repurpose the Power and Propulsion Element that was originally built for Gateway, a lunar space station NASA canceled earlier this year, to serve as the spacecraft.

NASA also is collaborating with the Department of Energy to design and assemble the reactor for the mission.

“We’re trying to leverage as much as we can with as little new development as possible. I know that’s always a challenge. It always sounds good on paper, but that’s really the intent,” Lori Glaze, the acting associate administrator for NASA’s exploration systems development, said during a June meeting with the National Academies’ Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board.

It’s unclear how NASA will shuffle funding already allocated in the 2026 budget to pay for the Mars mission, or how they’ll work it into the 2027 appropriations process. But NASA officials said, as of now, they’ll be able to find the money for the program.

“We are realigning all the resources within the topline to make sure we can cover the items that were identified in Ignition, and right now, it all fits,” Glaze said.

On SkyFall specifically, NASA said in a separate statement that the helicopters will be funded in part by the science directorate’s Mars Future Missions budget line, but declined to provide a cost estimate for Skyfall.

“While the final program-wide budget numbers are being carefully refined as mission architectures undergo formal design maturation, by getting both a launch and a ride to Mars with SR-1, this mission fits well with the administrator’s objective of reducing costs and concentrating efforts on missions with near term science and exploration opportunities,” the agency said.