Published: 12:05 AM, 22 August 2026
Trump pledges 'golden age' of space travel
US President Donald Trump pledged to blast more rockets into space in a push to boost US space travel, including to Mars and the Moon, the White House said on Aug 20.
The US is competing with China in the race to land astronauts on the Moon before 2030, more than 50 years after humans first walked the lunar surface, BBC reports.
The policy aims to "reinvigorate America's leadership in space transportation", enabling more than 1,000 launches and re-entries on US soil every year by 2030.
In a memorandum published on Aug 20, Trump called on US space agency NASA to "facilitate commercial transportation to and from the moon, to facilitate commercial robotic access to Mars, and to explore commercial avenues to send humans to and from Mars".
NASA is already pushing to create a lunar surface base and plans to use robotic vehicles to build infrastructure that future human explorers to the Moon could eventually make use of.
The President also encouraged private investment in US space exploration and called on his government to identify additional sites to launch and land spacecraft.
NASA is aiming in 2027 to test an in-orbit rendezvous between its spacecraft and at least one lunar lander, which billionaire Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are racing to develop with their rival firms SpaceX and Blue Origin.
