9 firms were decided on to habits early-stage research of ideas for business products and services to strengthen lower-cost, higher-frequency missions to the Pink Planet.
NASA has recognized 9 U.S. firms to accomplish a complete of 12 thought research of the way business products and services can also be carried out to permit science missions to Mars. Every awardee will obtain between $200,000 and $300,000 to provide an in depth document on doable products and services — together with payload supply, communications relay, floor imaging, and payload website hosting — that would strengthen long run missions to the Pink Planet.
The corporations had been decided on from amongst those who answered to a Jan. 29 request for proposals from U.S. trade.
NASA’s Mars Exploration Program initiated the request for proposals to lend a hand identify a brand new paradigm for missions to Mars with the possible to advance high-priority science goals. Most of the decided on proposals heart on adapting present initiatives recently targeted at the Moon and Earth to Mars-based packages.
They come with “area tugs” to hold different spacecraft to Mars, spacecraft to host science tools and cameras, and telecommunications relays. The ideas being sought are supposed to strengthen a large process of partnerships between executive, trade, and world companions to permit widespread, lower-cost missions to Mars over the following two decades.
“We’re in an exhilarating new generation of area exploration, with speedy expansion of business passion and functions,” mentioned Eric Ianson, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. “Now’s the proper time for NASA to start out taking a look at how public-private partnerships may strengthen science at Mars within the coming a long time.”
The chosen Mars Exploration Industrial Products and services research are divided into 4 classes:
Small payload supply and website hosting products and services
Lockheed Martin Company, Littleton, Colorado — adapt a lunar-exploration spacecraft
Impulse Area, Inc., Redondo Seashore, California — adapt an Earth-vicinity orbital switch car (area tug)
Firefly Aerospace, Cedar Park, Texas — adapt a lunar-exploration spacecraft
Huge payload supply and website hosting products and services
United Release Products and services (ULA), LLC, Centennial, Colorado — alter an Earth-vicinity cryogenic higher level
Blue Starting place, LLC, Kent, Washington — adapt an Earth- and lunar-vicinity spacecraft
Astrobotic Era, Inc., Pittsburgh — alter a lunar-exploration spacecraft
Mars surface-imaging products and services
Albedo Area Company, Broomfield, Colorado — adapt a low Earth orbit imaging satellite tv for pc
Redwire Area, Inc., Littleton, Colorado — alter a low Earth orbit business imaging spacecraft
Astrobotic Era, Inc. — alter a lunar exploration spacecraft to incorporate imaging
Subsequent-generation relay products and services
Area Exploration Applied sciences Company (SpaceX), Hawthorne, California — adapt Earth-orbit communique satellites for Mars
Lockheed Martin Company — supply communique relay products and services by the use of a changed Mars orbiter
Blue Starting place, LLC — supply communique relay products and services by the use of an tailored Earth- and lunar-vicinity spacecraft
The 12-week research are deliberate to conclude in August, and a find out about abstract might be launched later within the 12 months. Those research may probably result in long run requests for proposals however don’t represent a NASA dedication.
NASA is similtaneously inquiring for separate trade proposals for its Mars Pattern Go back marketing campaign, which seeks to carry samples being accumulated by means of the company’s Perseverance rover to Earth, the place they are able to be studied by means of laboratory apparatus too huge and complicated to carry to Mars. The MSR trade research are utterly unbiased of the MEP business research.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages the Mars Exploration Program on behalf of NASA’s Science Venture Directorate in Washington. The objective of this system is to offer a continuing drift of clinical data and discovery via a moderately decided on sequence of robot orbiters, landers, and cellular laboratories interconnected by means of a high-bandwidth Mars-Earth communications community. Clinical knowledge and related data for all Mars Exploration Program missions are archived within the NASA Planetary Knowledge Gadget.
Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.
Andrew Excellent
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.excellent@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Charles Blue
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-802-5345
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov
2024-057
