Earth Observation Payloads

Own the Mission, Not Just the Hardware: What This Week's Space Deals Are Really Selling

NASA just paid Blue Origin roughly $700 million, and the interesting part isn’t the dollar figure. It’s what the contract actually covers. The firm-fixed-price Mars Telecommunications Network award spans design, development, integration, launch, and network operations in a single deal, with Blue Origin expected to deliver the orbiter by the end of 2028. The spacecraft is based on Blue Ring, sized to carry more than 1,000 kilograms to Mars orbit, and it includes a 20-kilogram payload slot for science instruments or deployable CubeSats.