Key points
- Blue Origin wins NASA's $700 million Mars relay contract
- Rocket Lab (RKLB) had campaigned openly for the job
- Orbiter due by December 2028, working by 2030
- New Glenn's only pad is still under repair
NASA handed Blue Origin the job of building a communications relay for Mars on Tuesday. The contract is fixed-price and worth up to $700 million, NASA said. The orbiter has to be in the agency's hands by the end of 2028 and working at Mars by 2030.
Rocket Lab (RKLB) wanted it. Peter Beck, its chief executive, spent a year saying so in public. The stock closed flat at $62.55 on Tuesday and slipped 2.1% after hours, to $61.20 at 9:44 p.m. ET.
Blue Origin is Jeff Bezos's company and doesn't trade. It will build the spacecraft, launch it and run it. NASA's release describes the job as relaying science data, imagery, navigation and mission traffic for everything on and around the planet, under the agency's Space Communications and Navigation program.
Who was allowed to bid?
Not many. Congress put the $700 million in last year's budget reconciliation law and wrote the rules in with it. Only companies that had taken Mars sample return study money in 2024 or 2025, and had proposed a standalone comms orbiter in that work, could compete, SpaceNews reported. Eight companies qualified: Blue Origin, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, SpaceX, Quantum Space and Whittinghill Aerospace.
Bids were due June 15. Blue Origin had been pitching a version of its Blue Ring spacecraft for the role since August 2025, according to SpaceNews. NASA's release does not say what it bought or what rocket it will ride.
Lockheed Martin (LMT) told Aviation Week it would propose too. Its pitch was history: 11 NASA spacecraft sent to Mars, and the operator of all three science orbiters there now. Lockheed closed at $544.38.
What did Rocket Lab pitch?
One satellite, parked. Rocket Lab's design sat in areosynchronous orbit, which is the Mars version of a geostationary slot, and talked to Earth by laser instead of radio so it wouldn't crowd NASA's Deep Space Network. The company had picked up a $390,936 NASA study contract for Mars comms architecture in February, 24/7 Wall St. found in federal records.
Beck made the case last September. "Nothing happens without communications, great communications," he said, per NASASpaceFlight. On the deadline: "There's no opportunity there to do something crazy." His plan was to reuse what Rocket Lab already had on the shelf. "The way you can operate around a complicated spacecraft in that time frame is to take stuff that you've got."
The shelf includes the two ESCAPADE probes Rocket Lab built for NASA in about three and a half years. They left Earth in November 2025 on a New Glenn. Blue Origin's rocket.
Rocket Lab hasn't commented on the award. It won a $266 million Space Force launch contract in July. The stock page has the chart and insider history.
Can Blue Origin launch it?
The launch plan remains uncertain. New Glenn's booster exploded during a hot-fire test on May 28. The blast destroyed the vehicle and badly damaged Launch Complex 36, the only New Glenn pad Blue Origin has.
Chief executive Dave Limp said on June 1 the tower "can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced." He added: "We will fly again before the end of this year."
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was less specific. Restoring the pad would "take some serious time," he told CNBC the same day. He called a 2028 recovery "within the realm" of possible, and pointed out that NASA's own Moon Base rover deliveries on New Glenn aren't due until then. The Mars orbiter is due that year too.
| Mars Telecommunications Network | Detail |
|---|
| Contractor | Blue Origin |
| Contract type | Firm-fixed-price |
| Maximum value | About $700 million |
| Delivery deadline | December 31, 2028 |
| Operational at Mars | 2030 |
| Funding | 2025 budget reconciliation law |
| Proposals due | June 15, 2026 |
Isaacman, in the same interview, said where the agency stands: "We're all getting organized generally around the idea that we certainly want to see Blue Origin be very successful."
