NASA picks Blue Origin for new Mars communications network

NASA needs a way to talk to its spacecraft at Mars. On Tuesday, the agency picked Blue Origin to build it. The contract covers a new relay system called the Mars Telecommunications Network. It's worth up to $700 million. Blue Origin has to deliver a working orbiter to NASA by December 31, 2028. The goal is a faster, more reliable communication line for every future Mars mission, whether NASA's own or someone else's.

This isn't NASA's first pick for this kind of job. SpaceX has dominated recent NASA contracts, from crewed launches to lunar landers. Handing a major piece of Mars infrastructure to Blue Origin instead spreads NASA's bets across more than one company. That matters given how much NASA depends on private partners now. The money for this contract was set aside by Congress last year, in a bill called the OBBBA. That means this deal was already funded before Blue Origin even won it.

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Can Blue Origin actually deliver a working Mars orbiter on a fixed deadline? The company has flown people and cargo, but never built anything like a deep-space communications relay. NASA is also still overseeing Blue Origin's other big project. That's the Blue Moon lunar lander, on a tight timeline of its own. If Blue Origin stumbles here, NASA may need a backup plan. That could mean leaning on SpaceX or international partners instead. Any delay would push back whatever future Mars missions are counting on this network.