Trump orders expansion of commercial space capabilities

To achieve this goal, Trump directed government agencies to examine government-owned lands for new takeoff and landing sites. A new state spacecraft landing site is to be named within 90 days. Trump also requires that government agencies not compete with commercial providers unless national security or public safety requires it.

It also enables rapid and resilient launch capacities for national security. Upon request, the authorities should also check in individual cases whether foreign commercial spacecraft are allowed to launch in the USA.

According to the decree, the space agency Nasa should facilitate commercial transport to the moon as well as unmanned missions to Mars and explore paths for manned flights to Mars.

At the beginning of his second term, Trump repeatedly spoke about missions to Mars. He was influenced by Elon Musk, a major donor and temporary government advisor, for whose space company SpaceX Mars is a top priority. But Congress pushed to return the focus to NASA's multibillion-dollar Artemis lunar program.

Musk's SpaceX dominates the commercial rocket launch business. Of the 178 U.S. launches last year, Musk's company accounted for 170, with about 2,500 satellites being launched into space. The total number of US launches was ten times higher than in 2013.

In May, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that SpaceX was aiming for 10,000 annual launches within five years. In January, the company announced it would build a network of one million satellites that would use solar energy for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers on Earth.