The Mission: Blue Origin’s Mars Telecommunications Orbiter

Blue Origin designs and manufactures heavy-lift rockets, transporters, landers, and orbiters to explore the Red Planet efficiently and affordably. Built upon our existing and affordable Blue Ring platform, our Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) is ready to support NASA’s Mars mission in 2028. MTO is designed to establish a high-speed communications relay network for continuous coverage between Earth and Mars with the flexibility to meet future NASA robotic and human exploration needs. The orbiter builds upon Blue Origin’s Mars Next-Generation Relay and Mars Sample Return architecture commercial proposals.

MTO provides continuous high-speed communications between Earth and Mars through multiple, steerable high-rate links supported by a broad beam that offers wide-area coverage. This coverage is supplemented with a small number of deployable UHF relay satellites in low Mars orbit, providing UHF coverage to legacy assets and future entry, descent, and landing demonstrations.

MTO’s hybrid (electric + chemical) propulsion, maneuvering capability, and capacity greatly expand the windows to get to Mars, reducing mission risk. This system can reach Mars under challenging conditions by efficiently supplementing launch energy with electric propulsion, which is not possible with chemical systems alone. MTO’s solar electric propulsion provides highly efficient delta-v, allowing for more payload mass dedicated to high-performance communications. The platform can carry over 1,000 kg of payload to Mars orbit, depending on specific mission requirements. Additionally, MTO offers powerful edge processing, data storage, and AI capabilities to meet future Mars science and exploration demands.