The administration of Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum that redefines U.S. space policy: NASA must explore how to send humans to Mars through commercial solutions, in what the White House termed the beginning of the "Golden Age of Space Transportation."
The document, according to EFE, nullifies the space policy in effect since the administration of Barack Obama in 2013 and instructs the space agency to "explore commercial architectures for sending humans to the surface of Mars and bringing them back to Earth."
The memorandum does not set a specific date for a crewed mission to the red planet, but it does establish an ambitious goal: that by 2030 the United States' space infrastructure can support more than 1,000 annual launches and reentries, a leap of several orders of magnitude compared to current capacity.
The new directive also instructs NASA to facilitate commercial transportation to and from the Moon and promote private robotic access to the Martian surface, thus establishing a strategy of public-private partnerships that replaces the model of direct state management inherited from previous administrations.
The shift towards space commercialization comes months after one of the largest milestones in the U.S. space program in decades: the Artemis II mission completed in April the first crewed lunar flyby in more than fifty years, with a crew of four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft.
After that success, Trump received the crew at the White House and stated that the next step could be Mars, presenting the achievement as proof that the United States was "well ahead" of Russia and China in the space industry.
The relationship between Trump and NASA has been, however, contradictory: his administration proposed cuts of approximately 23% to the agency's total budget and nearly 50% to its scientific division for fiscal year 2026, although Congress rejected those cuts and ultimately approved 24.4 billion dollars.
In parallel with the new policy, NASA is advancing on concrete missions to the red planet. The helicopters SkyFall, developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), are scheduled to take off at the end of 2028 aboard the mission Space Reactor-1 Freedom, which will be the first interplanetary spacecraft powered by nuclear energy.
According to Infobae, the expedition will send three helicopters equipped with ground-penetrating radar to locate ice deposits about five meters below the Martian surface, crucial information for any future manned mission.
Adrian Tang, the principal scientist of the radar instrument on SkyFall at JPL, explained the reasoning behind the design: "By flying low and slow, a SkyFall helicopter could capture radar images that allow for distinguishing the fine layers where dry soil transitions to ice, detecting its presence and mapping its extent."
The August 2026 memorandum and the ongoing robotic missions outline a staggered roadmap: first, commercial robotic exploration; next, lunar infrastructure; and, in a more distant horizon yet to be defined, human presence on Mars.
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