Jack Loughran Fri 15 Aug 2025
Collected at: https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/08/15/blue-origin-plans-mars-telecommunications-orbiter-2028-deployment
Blue Origin has proposed a building a new telecommunications hub for Mars that could support Nasa’s future missions to the planet.
The Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) would maintain a high-altitude orbit around Mars while communicating with relay satellites, allowing it broad coverage across the planet.
The firm, which is led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, plans to utilise multiple, steerable high-rate links supported by a broad beam that offers wide-area coverage. This coverage will be supplemented with a small number of deployable UHF relay satellites in low-Mars orbit that should give Nasa a reliable and continuous communications link during future entry, descent and landing operations.
Blue Origin hopes that MTO could be deployed as soon as 2028 to be used in missions such as the proposed Rosalind Franklin rover, which will be launched as part of the ExoMars program, and eventually the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission.
Nasa’s Perseverance rover has been collecting samples to return to Earth since it landed on Mars in 2021, with the hope that MSR will allow those samples to eventually be sent back to Earth for study. The final decision for the go-ahead on MSR has been delayed until next year because of a number of scheduling and budget issues.
The MTO’s propulsion is based on a hybrid electric and chemical system to give it manoeuvring capability and expand the limited window needed to achieve Mars orbit. Blue Origin said the system can reach Mars under challenging conditions by supplementing launch energy with electric propulsion, which is not possible with chemical systems alone.
Electric propulsion typically uses electrostatic or electromagnetic fields to accelerate mass to high speed and thus generate thrust to modify the velocity of a spacecraft in orbit. Using solar energy could give the MTO the ability to manoeuvre itself for a much longer period of time as it will not be limited by the chemical fuel sent up with the spacecraft that will eventually be exhausted.
The system could allow MTO to carry over 1,000kg of payload to Mars orbit, depending on specific mission requirements. Additionally, the MTO will be equipped with edge processing, data storage and AI capabilities designed to meet the needs of future Mars missions.
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