President Donald J. Trump is Unveiling an America First National Space Strategy

“Our travels beyond the Earth propel scientific discoveries that improve our lives in countless ways here, right here, at home: powering vast new industry, spurring incredible new technology, and providing the space security we need to protect the American people.”

– President Donald J. Trump

AMERICA FIRST AMONG THE STARS: President Trump’s National Space Strategy works within his broader national security policy by putting America’s interests first.

• The Trump administration’s National Space Strategy prioritizes American interests first and foremost, ensuring a strategy that will make America strong, competitive, and great.
• The new strategy emphasizes dynamic and cooperative interplay between the national security, commercial, and civil space sectors.
• The United States will partner with the commercial sector to ensure that American companies remain world leaders in space technology.
• The new strategy ensures that international agreements put the interests of American people, workers, and businesses first.
• The National Space Strategy prioritizes regulatory reforms that will unshackle American industry and ensure we remain the leading global provider of space services and technology.

SPACE PREEMINENCE THROUGH THE AMERICAN SPIRIT: President Trump’s National Space Strategy harnesses the American spirit and continues the American tradition of pioneering and exploration.

• The President’s National Space Strategy builds on America’s pioneering, spacefaring tradition, laying the groundwork for the next generation of American exploration in space.
• The National Space Strategy establishes forthrightly that securing the scientific, commercial, and national security benefits of space is a top priority for this Administration.
• The United States will continue to lead in the creation and maintenance of the crucial space systems that are essential to our prosperity, security, and way of life.
• The Strategy puts forward a reinvigorated approach to ensuring U.S. leadership and success in space.

PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH: President Trump’s space strategy builds on the National Security Strategy emphasizing peace through strength in the space domain.

• The National Space Strategy protects our vital interest in space – to ensure unfettered access to, and freedom to operate in space, in order to advance America’s security, economic prosperity, and scientific knowledge.
  • Accordingly, the Administration’s new strategy calls for strengthening the safety, stability, and sustainability of our space activities. 
• The strategy affirms that any harmful interference with or attack upon critical components of our space architecture that directly affects this vital interest will be met with a deliberate response at a time, place, manner, and domain of our choosing.
  President Trump’s National Space Strategy recognizes that our competitors and adversaries have turned space into a warfighting domain. 
• While the United States would prefer that the space domain remain free of conflict, we will prepare to meet and overcome any challenges that arise.
• Under the President’s new strategy, the United States will seek to deter, counter, and defeat threats in the space domain that are hostile to the national interests of the United States and our allies.

FOUR PILLARS FOR A UNIFIED APPROACH: President Donald J. Trump’s new National Space Strategy drives a whole-of-government approach to United States leadership in space, in close partnership with the private sector and our allies, and is based on four essential pillars:

• Transform to more resilient space architectures:  We will accelerate the transformation of our space architecture to enhance resiliency, defenses, and our ability to reconstitute impaired capabilities.
• Strengthen deterrence and warfighting options:  We will strengthen U.S. and allied options to deter potential adversaries from extending conflict into space and, if deterrence fails, to counter threats used by adversaries for hostile purposes.
• Improve foundational capabilities, structures, and processes:  We will ensure effective space operations through improved situational awareness, intelligence, and acquisition processes.
• Foster conducive domestic and international environments:  We will streamline regulatory frameworks, policies, and processes to better leverage and support U.S. commercial industry, and we will pursue bilateral and multilateral engagements to enable human exploration, promote burden sharing and marshal cooperative threat responses.

A NEW DIRECTION FOR U.S. SPACE: President Trump has already taken significant steps to reorient American space policy and set it on the right path for the future.

• On June 30, 2017, the President revived the National Space Council for the first time in 24 years.
• On December 11, 2017, President Trump once again set America’s sights toward the stars by signing Space Policy Directive – 1, which instructed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to return American astronauts to the moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.
• In signing the directive, the President ordered action to work with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system.