Naomi Cooper
NASA has selected nine companies to conduct a total of 12 studies on the feasibility of using commercial services, such as payload delivery, payload hosting, communications relay and surface imaging, to support future science missions to Mars.
The Mars Exploration Commercial Services research program focuses on four categories: small payload delivery and hosting services, large payload delivery and hosting services, Mars surface-imaging services and next-generation relay services, NASA said Wednesday.
The selected companies are:
- Albedo Space Corporation
- Astrobotic Technology
- Blue Origin
- Firefly Aerospace
- Impulse Space
- Lockheed Martin
- Redwire Space
- SpaceX
- United Launch Services
Each awardee will receive between $200,000 and $300,000 to produce early-stage concept studies for enabling partnerships between the government and industry to support frequent, lower-cost missions to Mars over the next two decades.
“Now is the right time for NASA to begin looking at how public-private partnerships could support science at Mars in the coming decades,” said Eric Ianson, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
