Rolls-Royce gets £2.9m for ‘James Bond’ Moon project

British engineering giant tasked with creating a nuclear reactor to power a lunar base for scientists

The Moon
Rolls-Royce plans to have a lunar reactor ready by 2029
(Image credit: Laurent Emmanuel/AFP via Getty Images)

Rolls-Royce has been awarded funding by the UK Space Agency to build a nuclear reactor to power a base on the Moon.

The idea “might sound like the setup of a James Bond film”, said Sky News, but is “part of a very real-world project that aims to see humans living and working on the lunar surface”.

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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.