We have yet to find definitive evidence that there is biological life on today’s Mars, but calling it a dead planet isn’t exactly accurate. Since the first Viking lander touched down in 1976, a rotating cast of humanity’s robotic envoys has worked in and around the Red Planet, and as access to space becomes cheaper and more routine, Mars’ mechatronic population will continue to grow. Given the number of landers, rovers, and orbiting spacecraft that have been sent to study Mars over the past 50 years, you might be surprised to find that the communications systems put in place to transmit all that critical scientific data back to Earth aren’t as robust as you might think. While it’s understandable that the first spacecraft to reach Mars had to operate in isolation, even the flagship Perseverance and Curiosity rovers carry their own high-gain radio systems so they can communicate directly with Earth. Given the incredible importance placed on the mass of an interplanetary spacecraft, each mission that needs to bring its own link back to Earth effectively reduces its payload of much of the scientific equipment. It’s not that satellites in orbit around the planet aren’t used to transmit signals between Martian ground assets and their controllers on Earth. In fact, these relay links are widely used for bandwidth-intensive tasks such as image transfers. But it is also true that the ships currently available to act as intermediaries between the two planets are not very suitable for the task. The current fleet of Mars orbiters were conceived primarily as research vehicles, so every decision regarding their design and positioning around the planet was made with that goal in mind. The relatively limited ability they have as communication relays is further hampered by the age of their hardware. But after decades of false starts and shifting budgets, NASA is closer than ever to finally establishing the Mars Telecommunications Network, a dedicated, high-bandwidth communications repeater that will ensure current and future missions will always have a way to call home. The Fragile Mars Relay Network Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently make up what is known as the Mars Relay Network (MRN). The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft was also part of the MRN, but communication with the vehicle was lost in December 2025, and as of this summer, NASA officially declared the mission over. The MRN has been absolutely invaluable to many high-profile missions, and there’s an excellent chance that almost every image you’ve ever seen of the Martian surface has at some point passed through it on its way back to Earth. But for the spacecraft that make up the NRM, transporting bits through black space is more of a part-time job. Their individual primary missions are scientific in nature, and it shows. Let’s consider the Mars Express. Launched by the European Space Agency in 2003, the main objectives of its mission included launching a small rover, analyzing the Martian atmosphere and studying the planet’s closest moon, Phobos. To perform these tasks and reduce the amount of propellant needed, ESA placed Mars Express into a highly elliptical orbit in which the spacecraft descends to within 300 kilometers (185 miles) of the surface before returning to a distance of 10,000 km (6,200 miles). Unfortunately, the rotation of Mars in combination with this exaggerated orbit means that rovers on the surface cannot maintain a constant link with the vehicle and, as such, their usefulness as a communications relay is limited to relatively narrow windows. But in 2026, the real problem with the NRM is the age of its constituent members. MAVEN had already been flying for 12 years when it stopped working, but that’s nothing compared to its peers. Mars Express has been in operation for 23 years, while Mars Odyssey has been in orbit for an incredible 25 years. Even the baby of the bunch, ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, was launched more than a decade ago. These are very impressive durations for missions of this type, to the point that Mars Express and Mars Odyssey are the two oldest operational spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth. While their continued operation is a testament to the engineering that went into them, the Mars Relay Network has more than earned its retirement. An Overdue Update Given their age, it’s not like there’s any disagreement over whether the NRM spacecraft should be replaced or not. Similarly, few would deny the operational benefit of a dedicated communications repeater in orbit above Mars. It is not surprising that debates on both points have been going on since the early 2000s. Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, circa 2005. NASA’s original plan for what they called the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) would have put the spacecraft into orbit around the Red Planet in 2010. The vehicle’s design concept called for two X-band transmitters and two Ka-band radios, plus an experimental laser communication system that could return data to Earth at an unprecedented rate. Unfortunately, the MTO concept was canceled just a few years after its inception, as NASA needed to allocate the money to other missions, such as the final servicing mission for Hubble and the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, then in development, that would bring Curiosity to the surface in 2012. The general idea has been floating around ever since, being reintroduced into budget discussions every few years. None of the proposals have managed to gain the necessary support, in part due to the vague nature of the mission. Typically, when NASA or ESA spend hundreds of millions of dollars to send a spacecraft to Mars, they have a long list of scientific goals to justify the price. But a communications repeater that carries little or no secondary scientific payloads is a tougher sell. Consolation Prize for Sample Return Given all the false starts the project has had over the past two decades, it’s somewhat ironic that the only reason the space agency can allocate significant funding to the mission now is because of the collapse of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) initiative. A budget reconciliation package passed by Congress in July 2025 allocated $700 million to revive the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter program, but stipulated that it had to be built by one of the commercial companies that had contributed to the MSR mission, and that it should be ready for launch in 2028. In May of this year, NASA submitted a request for proposals to build what it was now calling the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTN), and earlier this month They awarded Blue Origin a fixed-price contract to develop, build, launch and operate the spacecraft. As with previous incarnations of the MTO, Blue Origin’s spacecraft will provide a high-bandwidth link back to Earth that can be used by multiple current and future missions to Mars. The vehicle itself will feature a series of ports on which scientific instruments, deployable sub-relays, or potentially even a lander can be mounted. Technically, the contract only requires that the orbiter be capable of carrying a 20-kilogram scientific payload, but Blue Origin has presumably expanded on that idea to be able to offer Mars “ride-sharing” opportunities for other companies while still meeting design requirements set by NASA. Given how quickly all of this is happening, there isn’t much public information about Blue Origin’s spacecraft yet. But we can glean some interesting technical details from NASA’s original RFP, such as the requirement that the relay must offer at least one terabyte of non-volatile store and forward capacity, and should be able to achieve a 150 Mbps link from Mars to Earth. Interestingly, despite the impressive demonstration of the Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O) earlier this year, NASA specifically noted that support for optical communication was not a requirement of the Mars Telecommunications Network contract, although it would consider the feature a plus if it were included. Not everyone is happy With federally mandated funding and a contractor already building hardware, it appears the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter is now closer to reality than ever. But of course, nothing is really guaranteed when it comes to space. Production runs into problems, software bugs are discovered, and occasionally rockets explode on the launch pad. In addition to this general uncertainty, the revamped Mars Telecommunications Orbiter will also have to deal with politics. Since the announcement that Blue Origin was selected for the MTN contract, Rocket Lab has filed a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office. They claim that the design presented by Blue Origin is “inconsistent with the eligibility criteria required by Congress” and that NASA made incorrect claims about RocketLab’s own proposal. Because Rocket Lab is protesting the decision, both NASA and Blue Origin must legally stop all work on the MTN project until the Government Accountability Office can review the selection process and make a decision. This process can take up to 100 days, meaning there may not be a resolution until the end of the year. Under normal circumstances, this might simply be a bureaucratic hassle, but when it comes to a mission that needs to leave Earth during periodic Mars launch windows that only occur every 26 months, a prolonged delay could ultimately push the project into the next decade.
