Kilopower
An illustration of a Kilopower nuclear reactor on the moon. NASA is considering a flight test of that fission reactor technology, possibly flown on a lunar lander, in the mid-2020s.

Less than a month after issuing a policy directive on space nuclear power, the White House released an executive order Jan. 12 seeking to promote the development of small nuclear reactors for space and defense applications.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...