U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing federal agencies to expand annual rocket launches and reentries to at least 1,000 by 2030, a near-tripling of current activity.
The directive prioritizes reusable launch systems as a key enabler of the scaled-up cadence and mandates the identification of federal land for new launch and landing sites within 90 days. Commercial providers will take precedence in infrastructure development, with government competition restricted to cases involving national or public safety. Regulatory processes for launch licensing are to be streamlined, and sufficient radio spectrum allocations are to be secured to support the growth in activity.
The policy framework seeks to position the U.S. as the global leader in the next phase of space exploration, according to Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. It envisions crewed lunar missions by 2028 and the establishment of early lunar base elements by 2030, alongside enhanced launch capacity for national security applications. The order also directs NASA to facilitate commercial lunar cargo transport and robotic Mars missions while exploring pathways for human missions to the Red Planet.
SpaceX dominated the U.S. launch market in 2023, conducting 170 of the nation’s 178 orbital launches and deploying roughly 2,500 satellites. The company has publicly targeted 10,000 annual launches within five years, reflecting the rapid expansion of commercial space activity. Earlier this year, SpaceX announced plans to deploy a constellation of up to one million satellites to beam solar energy to terrestrial data centers powered by artificial intelligence.
The executive action follows repeated calls by Trump during his second term for accelerated Mars exploration, influenced in part by Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and a major political donor. Congressional priorities, however, have centered on NASA’s Artemis Moon program, a multibillion-dollar initiative aimed at returning astronauts to the lunar surface.
