On Mars, NASA paves the way for commercial services
The road to Mars is long and perilous. If the NASA and others space agencies have already had great successes in exploring our red neighbor, they have also failed many times there – and just as many landers. To reduce the costs of missions, the US space agency wants to appeal to private companies by buying commercial services from them.
Supporting future Mars missions
Specifically, under a proposal developed by NASA's Mars Exploration Program, NASA would purchase imaging, transportation and communications services to support science missions from other companies. In return, companies working with NASA could sell similar services to other U.S. and international government agencies, as well as commercial customers.
NASA has not yet officially embraced the idea of using commercial services to support Mars missions. The concept, which is currently undergoing feasibility studies, would likely be implemented in the 2030s and 2040s, if at all. But the agency is giving it serious thought, announcing on May 1 that it had appointed nine U.S. companies to conduct a total of 12 concept studies on how commercial services could be applied to enable scientific missions to Mars.
Each winner received between $200,000 and $300,000 to produce a detailed report on potential services, including payload delivery, communications relays, surface imaging and payload hosting, that could support future missions to the Red Planet…but without the rovers.
Because the goal of this action is not to encourage companies to create specific technologies from scratch, but to transpose what they know how to do for the Earth or the Moon to the Martian case. Thus, Firefly Aerospace, Impulse Space and Lockheed Martin have worked on the possibility of hosting or delivering small payloads to Mars orbit. Astrobotic, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance have studied the hosting and delivery of large payloads. Albedo Space, Astrobotic and Redwire have considered imaging services. Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and SpaceX have examined communication relays.
Give a facelift
An important goal is also to secure commercial help to upgrade the aging infrastructure around Mars. The probe's HiRISE camera Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter NASA, for example, has been transmitting images since 2006.
While NASA is moving forward slowly and only asking for support, some private companies are looking further ahead. Of course, the ambitions displayed by SpaceX and its whimsical founder Elon Musk have always been to reach Mars, but the company has inspired others: Relativity Space and Impulse plan to send a commercial robotic spacecraft to Mars in 2028. Blue Origin, meanwhile, is preparing for its EscaPADE missiontwo NASA micro-probes that will leave for Martian orbit in October, during the inaugural flight of its heavy launcher New Glenn.
