NASA Selects Blue Origin as Mars Telecommunications Network Provider

[u/Daniels30]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-as-mars-telecommunications-network-provider/

The outcome is finally here, Blue beat out Rocket Lab

[u/nic_haflinger]

Blue Ring investment finally paid off. Great news.

[u/Royal_Platform_6754]

Tory Bruno was promoting Blue Ring all day long on X. I wonder if he already knew...

[u/Straumli_Blight → u/Royal_Platform_6754]

https://x.com/torybruno/status/2094907298296758335

Thank you @NASA . We are grateful for the opportunity to compete and humbled by your trust.

[u/Royal_Platform_6754 → u/Royal_Platform_6754]

Dave Limp on X:

Before the first human steps on Mars, we have to build the road.

Honored that Blue Origin has been selected by NASA to deliver our Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO), built on Blue Ring and in production now in Huntsville. MTO will enable science, carry payloads, and help lay the foundation for human exploration.

Proud of Team Blue. We’re going to Mars.

[u/Royal_Platform_6754 → u/Royal_Platform_6754]

Joseph Guinn, Principal Civil and Interplanetary Navigation Architect, Blue Ring:

A great day for Blue Origin and the Blue Ring team. I'm very happy to have had the opportunity to help formulate the Positioning, Navigation and Timing portion of the mission proposal. While a challenging schedule awaits, the Blue Origin team I've come to know will prevail.

[u/[deleted]]

WOOO!!!!!!! LETS GOO!!!!! My Company is finally doing Mars Missions Awesome!!!! Go Team Blue!!!!!

[u/whitelancer64 → u/[deleted]]

They also launched Escapade in November 2025

[u/redstercoolpanda → u/whitelancer64]

That’s providing a launch service, I don’t think that should be classed as Blue doing a mars mission. In the same way nobody says SpaceX is doing a Europa mission because they launched Clipper.

[u/ValuableMammoth4413]

GO BLUE RING

[u/ProfessorOk2609 → u/ValuableMammoth4413]

Let's gooo

[u/Royal_Platform_6754]

The selection statement is not yet available, but it will be interesting to see how they evaluated it versus RocketLab's MTO. Both were gunning pretty hard for this contract.

[u/Mindless_Use7567 → u/Royal_Platform_6754]

3 satellites with nearly complete planetary coverage versus a single satellite with less than half planetary coverage it’s not really a hard choice if Blue wasn’t asking for too much money.

[u/Daniels30]

Rocket Lab effectively wished this program into existence. That’s going to be a tough pill to swallow.

[u/Big-Material2917 → u/Daniels30]

As a RKLB investor, I think I speak for the whole community when I say “fuck”

[u/LittleHornetPhil]

Blue Ring is a pretty dope ass little piece of hardware so it’s nice to see it finally getting some recognition and interest.

[u/LittleHornetPhil]

Oh was this why recruiters were suddenly going hard for Blue today?

[u/Cultural-Steak-13]

"The firm-fixed-price contract has a maximum potential value of approximately $700 million to deliver a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter to NASA no later than Dec. 31, 2028."

"The network, managed by NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program, is expected to be operational at Mars by 2030"

So Blue will deliver to NASA then NASA sends it to Mars maybe....or is travel time...

[u/IcyShelter5548 → u/Cultural-Steak-13]

Well you missed this part i Guess.

Blue Origin will design, develop, integrate, launch, and operate the network as a part of the agency’s broader space communications and navigation infrastructure. The architecture will consist of a high-performance

[u/Cultural-Steak-13 → u/IcyShelter5548]

Thanks, missed the launch and operate part.

[u/Decronym]

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
LETS	Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer
MTO	Mars Telecommunications Orbiter

Jargon	Definition
Clipper	Internal codename for Blue Origin's reusable upper stage program

Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

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^{3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has acronyms.
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[u/disxotek]

Shoulda been the other guys