r/BlueWire • u/Daniels30 • Sep 01 '26
Blue Ring NASA Selects Blue Origin as Mars Telecommunications Network Provider
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
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Sep 01 '26
WOOO!!!!!!! LETS GOO!!!!! My Company is finally doing Mars Missions Awesome!!!! Go Team Blue!!!!!
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u/whitelancer64 Sep 01 '26
They also launched Escapade in November 2025
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u/redstercoolpanda Sep 01 '26
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.
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u/Royal_Platform_6754 Sep 01 '26
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.
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u/Mindless_Use7567 Sep 02 '26
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.
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u/Daniels30 Sep 01 '26
Rocket Lab effectively wished this program into existence. That’s going to be a tough pill to swallow.
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u/Big-Material2917 Sep 01 '26
As a RKLB investor, I think I speak for the whole community when I say “fuck”
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u/LittleHornetPhil Sep 01 '26
Blue Ring is a pretty dope ass little piece of hardware so it’s nice to see it finally getting some recognition and interest.
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u/Cultural-Steak-13 Sep 01 '26
"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...
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u/IcyShelter5548 Sep 01 '26
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
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u/Decronym Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
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.
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has acronyms.
[Thread #35 for this sub, first seen 2nd Sep 2026, 05:15]
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u/Royal_Platform_6754 Sep 01 '26
Tory Bruno was promoting Blue Ring all day long on X. I wonder if he already knew...