WASHINGTON – NASA hopes to have a better understanding by this summer of potential commercial partnerships to support future Mars science missions.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued a request for proposals on January 29 for a “commercial service study” for future robotic Mars mission concepts. The study, valued at $200,000 or $300,000, will be conducted over 12 weeks.
The study aims to investigate four specific design reference missions to explore commercial opportunities to support Mars exploration: delivery of small payloads up to 20 kg to Mars orbit, delivery of large payloads up to 1,250 kg to Mars orbit, Delivery of payloads, providing high-resolution imaging of the Martian surface and communications relay services between Mars and Earth.
These studies are linked to a draft strategy for future Mars exploration that NASA released about a year ago. That “Exploring Mars Together” strategy outlined the future robotic missions that NASA will send to Mars following the Mars Sample Return Program. NASA said at the time that this would include opportunities for commercial partnerships in addition to traditional NASA-led missions.
“We’re really interested in seeing what the commercial sector can provide from a commercial standpoint,” said Eric Ianson, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, during a presentation at the March 4 meeting of the agency’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee. ” “We intend to select several for these studies to assess the cost, feasibility, and technological maturity of potential services on Mars.”
Proposals were due to be submitted to JPL on February 27, and Ianson said the agency was evaluating them with the goal of making an award in April. This will allow the results of the study to be published “some time in the summer,” he said.
Some studies aim to investigate how the partnership can address emerging deficiencies in NASA’s Mars infrastructure. “Our Mars relay network is aging and we are concerned about being able to maintain the ability to provide data relay from the surface of Mars back to Earth,” he said. Those services are currently provided by science orbiters that have remained in service well beyond their prime missions.
The same is currently true for the high-resolution imaging provided by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been at Mars for nearly two decades. “We would like to explore what else the industry might be able to do in this area.”
The studies will look not only at the technical feasibility of those proposed missions but also their commercial feasibility. Ianson cited data relay as a prime example of this. “Is there interest in the commercial sector in providing services related to comms relay to Mars, and if so, what would it cost, what would it look like, how do we develop that public-private partnership?”
The question of commercial feasibility was on the minds of committee members, who drew parallels to NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) effort. He questioned whether there would be enough non-NASA interest in such missions to make a commercial partnership work.
“Mars may have some similarities, it may have some differences from CLPS,” he said. One goal of the study is to see how public-private partnerships can be “structured in such a way that it is beneficial to both parties.”
“I would be careful referring to it as ‘Mars CLPS,'” he said, noting that the study will not cover landing payloads on Mars. “I think we’re a long way from that.”
“We’re not just talking about taking CLPS and taking it to Mars,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said at the meeting. “It’s a different business model. But, the idea of a service approach is something that is worth exploring.”
In parallel with commercial studies, NASA is working to refine the strategy of simultaneous Mars exploration launched last year. That strategy exists primarily in charts and presentations, Ianson said. “We have received a lot of comments from the community. We’re including them in the plan,” he said, adding that a formal written version of the strategy will be completed this summer.
