Nevertheless, certain NASA officials read the Cruz bill’s wording as authorizing only a telecommunications orbiter and say it would be difficult, if not impossible, to run a procurement competition between now and September 30th for anything beyond a basic communications orbiter.
In a statement to Ars, a NASA spokesperson said the agency plans to do exactly that.
“NASA intends to acquire a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter that will deliver reliable, continuous communications for Mars missions,” the spokesperson said. “NASA looks forward to partnering with commercial firms to advance deep-space communications and navigation capabilities, strengthening US leadership in Mars infrastructure and the commercial space sector.”
Major choices ahead
Still, sources say Isaacman has not yet decided whether the orbiter should carry scientific instruments. NASA could also draw on other funding in its fiscal year 2026 budget, which included $110 million for unspecified “Mars Future Missions,” along with a sizable pool that could potentially support a Mars commercial payload delivery program.
NASA’s options therefore range from asking industry for a single telecom orbiter from one company, to requesting a telecom orbiter designed to accommodate a couple of instruments, or to creating competition by soliciting multiple orbiters and capabilities using the $700 million in the Cruz bill and supplementing that with other Mars funds.
A sign the process has become muddled inside NASA appeared a week ago, when the agency briefly posted a “Justification for Other Than Full and Open Competition, Extension” notice on a government website. It said the agency “will only conduct a competition among vendors that satisfy the statutory qualifications.” The notice also named the companies eligible to bid under the Cruz language: Blue Origin, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, SpaceX, Quantum Space, and Whittinghill Aerospace.
