In a significant shift, NASA is opening up Mars exploration to private companies, awarding a series of research tasks as a precursor to commercial support for future missions to the Red Planet. This move aligns with NASA’s desire to foster partnerships between government and industry, leveraging innovative technologies and reducing costs.
A total of nine companies were selected to conduct twelve “concept studies” on how they could provide Mars-related services, ranging from delivering payloads to capturing planetary images to establishing communications relays. While each award is relatively modest, ranging from $200,000 to $300,000, these studies represent a crucial initial step for NASA to evaluate the potential, risks, and costs of employing commercial technologies.
The selected companies include Lockheed Martin, Impulse Space, and Firefly Aerospace for small payload delivery and hosting; United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, and Astrobotic for large payload delivery and hosting; Albedo, Redwire Space, and Astrobotic for Mars surface-imaging services; and SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, and Blue Origin for next-generation relay systems. NASA noted that most of the proposed projects would leverage existing technologies developed for lunar or Earth-based applications.
These twelve-week studies will culminate in August, and there is no guarantee that they will directly lead to future contracts or requests for proposals. However, it is highly improbable that future contracts will emerge without prior studies by interested companies.
The selection of companies stemmed from a request for proposals issued earlier this year by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The solicitation emphasized the goal of developing a new paradigm for Mars exploration, one that enables “more frequent lower cost missions” through partnerships between government and industry. This approach mirrors the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which awards substantial contracts to private companies for payload delivery to the Moon.
Similar to CLPS, which played a pivotal role in financing the first successful private lunar lander, these recent awards underscore NASA’s growing confidence in collaborating with smaller, early-stage startups working on unproven technologies. This move aligns with the agency’s recognition of the potential for innovation and cost-saving opportunities that private partnerships can bring to the forefront of space exploration.
