Space startups are licking their lips after NASA converts $11B Mars mission into a free-for-all

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the agency’s $11 billion, 15-year mission to collect and return samples from Mars…was insufficient. But this change in strategy could be a huge boon for space startups, to which much of the planned funding will almost certainly be redirected.

“Ultimately, an $11 billion budget is too expensive and a 2040 return date is too far away,” Nelson said at a news conference. “We need to think outside the box to find a solution that is both affordable and allows samples to be retrieved in a reasonable time frame. »

In other words, clear the decks and start again – with commercial suppliers on board from the start.

The Mars Sample Return mission was still in the planning stages, but an independent review of the project last year found that, given budget, technology and other constraints, the mission was unlikely to be completed before 2040, and at a cost of 8 to 11 dollars. billion. (And like goldfish, projects like these tend to hit the maximum planned budget.)

Although NASA has proposed a revised plan in the mold of the original, it has now also challenged the space community to go further: “NASA will soon solicit architectural proposals from industry that could return samples in the 2030s and reduce costs, risks and mission. complexity.”

Given the scale of investment by large companies and space startups in interplanetary capability, this announcement is arguably a historic boon. A company like Intuitive Machines, growing rapidly after achieving the first private moon landing, will almost certainly be firing on all cylinders to accept what could be a multibillion-dollar contract.

Even if NASA wants to spend only half or even a quarter of the initial budget on a project led by a commercial space company, private industry has already shown that it can do more with less compared to traditional companies.

It’s also catnip for launch companies, because the time horizon is far enough away that heavy launchers like Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, and of course SpaceX’s Starship can be cleared to fly when the mission is ready to progress. This was undoubtedly the plan for 2040 as well, but the “2030s” (the new notion) are much closer to the present, and one hamburger today is worth ten in a decade.

Between the lines, one can see the admission that any mission planned before the current boom in orbital and interplanetary capabilities is, quite simply, no longer feasible. Although NASA’s Space Launch System heavy-duty launch vehicle is perhaps the largest project of its kind, abandoning it now would be a waste of money, while preemptively opting for a lighter Mars program fueled by ambitions commercial, does not seem to have any obvious disadvantage. (There is plenty of time to save and reuse the most important concepts and research already done by NASA and its partners.)

There is no doubt that many companies who will benefit from this move – not only startups and growing space companies, but also tier one and launch providers – saw the writing on the wall and were eagerly waiting. this day. But the official announcement, and the implication that this is the next generation of space companies that will achieve ambitious goals like a round trip to Mars, must be very validating.

To be clear, there is no money on the table yet – but the promise has essentially been made that what would have belonged to the Mars Sample Return mission will be repurposed depending on the new plan that the broad “community of The NASA “. Whatever this new plan is, it will almost certainly rely much more heavily on commercial services and hardware than before.

Just as commercial lunar payload services have accelerated and encouraged the proliferation of vehicles, spacecraft, and landers that we see today – including some by companies that did not exist a few years ago – the new Mars Sample Return mission may have fired the starting gun. on commercial ambitions for the red planet.