NASA has selected Blue Origin to build and operate a telecommunications network around Mars, awarding the company a contract worth up to approximately $700 million for infrastructure intended to relay communications and navigation data for future missions.

The first network spacecraft is due by the end of 2028. Under the firm-fixed-price contract, Blue Origin will design, develop, integrate, launch and operate a high-performance telecommunications orbiter, according to NASA’s September 1 contract announcement. The agency expects the network to be operational at Mars by 2030.

The orbiter is intended to relay science data, imagery, navigation information and mission communications for spacecraft on and around Mars. NASA says the purpose-built system will provide greater communications capacity, reliability and operational flexibility as the number and data requirements of Mars missions grow.

The contract also extends NASA’s shift toward commercially operated communications infrastructure beyond Earth. NASA sought industry proposals for the Mars Telecommunications Network in May, describing it as part of its Space Communications and Navigation program’s architecture for extending network services from Earth to the Moon and Mars. Blue Origin will operate the Mars network as part of that broader infrastructure rather than simply deliver a spacecraft to NASA.

The Mars system is also part of NASA’s developing approach to an interplanetary network based on Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking, or DTN. NASA describes DTN as a standardized store-and-forward protocol architecture designed for networks where long delays and intermittent links make conventional terrestrial Internet protocols inadequate. NASA says DTN became operational across its Near Space Network and Deep Space Network following completion of an agency-wide project in January 2026.

NASA specifically describes the planned 2030 Mars relay as DTN-enabled. Its current communications architecture calls DTN a foundation for a “Solar System Internet,” with the Mars network following deployment of interoperable networking around the Moon. Standardized DTN can allow spacecraft and ground stations belonging to different agencies or commercial providers to exchange data, while its store-and-forward design preserves traffic when the next communications link is temporarily unavailable.

That makes interoperability and resilience consequential features of the commercial model. NASA’s earlier Mars relay planning identified addressable data transfers, provider custody of data and autonomous routing among available network nodes as potential DTN capabilities. The resulting infrastructure is intended not merely as a faster radio link to Earth, but as a network capable of routing communications among multiple missions and providers despite the delays and disruptions inherent in interplanetary communications.