It won’t be easy for NASA to buy commercial services to support Mars exploration.
The vast distance between Earth and the Red Planet poses a significant challenge, as do the radiation and thermal issues spacecraft will experience on the journey. Still, the prospect of harnessing commercial innovation to reduce the cost of studying Mars is too enticing to ignore.
“I’m not standing up here saying, ‘We know how to do commercial services at Mars,’” Steve Matousek, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Exploration Program advanced studies office manager, said in August at the Small Satellite Conference in Logan, Utah. “That’s why we have these kinds of get-togethers, to figure out how to do it.”
Under a proposal being fleshed out by the Mars Exploration Program, NASA would act as an anchor tenant, buying commercial imagery, transportation and communications services to support science missions. Companies working with NASA could sell similar services to other U.S. and international government agencies and commercial customers.
By buying commercial services, NASA wants to enable “more science to be done at Mars,” said Nathan Barba, JPL Mars Exploration Program advanced studies office lead systems engineer. “The missions may be smaller, but they’re not going to be tech demonstrations. The future missions are going to be doing decadal-class science.”
Tech investmentNASA purchases rides to the International Space Station for crew and cargo as well as transportation to the moon through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The Mars Exploration Program is meeting with people overseeing those programs to identify lessons learned and determine how to buy commercial services “for Mars, and I would say also for deep space,” Matousek said.
NASA hasn’t formally embraced the idea of turning to commercial services to support Mars missions. The concept, being explored through feasibility studies, would likely be carried out in the 2030s and 2040s, if at all.
Still, NASA is encouraged by the private sector’s enthusiasm for Mars missions and commercial space activity in general. To spur on commercial Mars missions, NASA will share expertise gained over decades of exploration. And the space agency will invest in Mars technology “to plant the seeds for the future,” Matousek said. “We’re planning a substantial bump up in that technology area starting next year. That includes entry, descent and landing, aerial and surface mobility, instruments and network science.”
Low-hanging fruitNASA’s 2023 draft strategy for long-term robotic exploration of Mars, “Exploring Mars Together,” calls for “frequent access to Mars, sending one, two or more things every opportunity,” Matousek said. Since NASA budgets aren’t likely to increase, launching missions every couple of years means figuring out how “to substantially lower the cost of missions,” he added.
The strategy document cites the need to update the communications, imaging, meteorological and transportation services all Mars missions rely on and says, “Actively consider opportunities to buy commercial services to address infrastructure.”
The title, “Exploring Mars Together,” does not simply mean NASA will be “exploring Mars together with industry,” Barba said during a SmallSat panel discussion. “It means exploring Mars with our international partners, with new entrants, new scientists, new engineers, established folks. And figuring out how we all come together and do something great.”
In May, NASA awarded contracts to nine companies to explore the feasibility of transporting cargo to and providing services from Mars’ orbit. None of the studies call for landers.
“We started these studies with the low-hanging fruit because going to the surface of Mars is very challenging,” said Ryan Woolley, JPL mission design engineer. “Very few have ever actually done it. It’s not something that’s commercially available.”
In contrast, getting to Mars’ orbit “can look similar to going to the moon,” Woolley said. “We’re asking companies to make hopefully small modifications to current products that will enable them to take it to Mars. They’ll find out what technologies they need: added power, added propulsion, shielding, whatnot.”Under the study contracts, Firefly Aerospace, Impulse Space and Lockheed Martin looked at hosting or delivering small payloads to Mars’ orbit. Astrobotic, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance explored large payload hosting and delivery. Albedo Space, Astrobotic and Redwire considered imagery services. Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and SpaceX examined communications relay.
NASA plans to begin sharing the studies’ key findings this fall.
Updating infrastructureAn important goal for the Mars Exploration Program is getting commercial help updating aging infrastructure around Mars. The HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, for example, has been sending back imagery since 2006.
“How are we going to keep providing those stunning, high-resolution images of Mars that we’ve grown used to and count on?” Matousek asked.Future Mars missions also will require enhanced communications, navigation and data-relay services.
“Almost all of the science and exploration missions we talk about have some advancement that’s needed in that area: large data volumes, bigger coverage on the surface,” Matousek said. “We need to study that to see what comes next.”
Finding ridesMars transportation is another priority for companies setting their sights on Mars.
“The number one challenge for these commercial services is simply repeated access, regular access, access on-demand and affordable access” to Mars, said Al Tadros, Redwire chief technology officer.
Aside from the NASA study contracts, Relativity Space and Impulse plan to send a commercial robotic spacecraft to Mars in 2028. An Impulse lander is slated to fly on Relativity’s medium-lift Terran R rocket.
“That’s Relativity’s first step in putting our money where our mouth is,” said Relativity senior mission manager Paul Rishel. “It is committing our own internal resources to actually demonstrate the ability to put small payloads into Martian orbit and to land an actual payload on the Martian surface with commercial resources.”
Reliable transportation to Mars will require “at minimum two medium-to-heavy vehicles provided by quickly moving commercial companies that are increasing your number of shots on goal while decreasing the cost per kilogram for payload deployed to those orbits,” Rishel said.
Artist’s concept of Impulse Space Mars Cruise Vehicle and Mars Lander approaching the Red Planet. Credit: Impulse SpacePendulum swingsBlue Origin, meanwhile, is preparing to send NASA’s Escapade small satellite mission to Martian orbit in October on the inaugural flight of its New Glenn heavy-lift rocket.
Tommy Sanford, Blue Origin civil sales director, lauded the Mars Exploration Program for considering the lessons of ongoing public-private partnerships and commercial-services campaigns.
As the executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation from 2014 to 2020, Sanford saw the growing popularity of commercial service contracts.
Looking ahead, “the key is ensuring that when the pendulum swings back, which it certainly will, that you don’t let it swing all the way back, where folks will think that there shouldn’t be any commercial programs and it should be all traditional programs again,” Sanford said.
Impulse plans to manufacture vehicles to transport payloads through low-Earth and geostationary orbit, to cislunar space and Mars.
“We are looking forward to what the Mars Exploration Program comes up with next to further the commercialization of transport to Mars,” said Aaron Mitchell, Impulse’s director of products.
Customer discoveryGovernment-services contracts are a useful tool in helping companies identify new customers for space services, said Eric Salwan, Firefly co-founder and business development director.
Firefly is preparing to send a lander to the moon later this year under a CLPS contract. Without CLPS, Firefly would not have built a lunar lander because the company would not have been able to prove the business case. Having NASA as an anchor customer enabled Firefly to attract additional commercial and government customers.
A similar scenario may play out for Mars. “Mars is much harder than the moon, without a doubt, especially when you start talking about reaching the surface,” Salwan said. “Once we lower the cost and increase the ability for people to do these missions, sovereign nations are going to want their own Mars programs.”
Commercial services proposalObjectiveTo reduce costs and increase the frequency of Mars exploration by purchasing commercial services for transportation, imagery and communication.Key ChallengesDistance: Mars is approximately 225 million kilometers (140 million miles) from Earth, making communication and travel difficult.Radiation and temperature: spacecraft must endure extreme radiation and temperature fluctuations on the journey to and from Mars.Current StrategyUnder the “Exploring Mars Together” initiative, NASA plans to expand work with industry and international partners.Commercial ApproachA proposal being explored calls for NASA to act as an anchor tenant, buying services from commercial companies, who would sell similar services to other public and private customers.Contracts AwardedIn May 2023, NASA awarded contracts to nine companies to explore services like cargo transport and communications from Mars orbit.Companies InvolvedFirefly Aerospace, Impulse Space, Lockheed Martin, Astrobotic, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, Albedo Space, Redwire and SpaceX.Future GoalsEstablish regular, affordable access to Mars orbit and surface, update aging Mars infrastructure, and enable more scientific missions through public-private partnerships.This article first appeared in the September 2024 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.