For more than 20 years, NASA has relied on a network of spacecraft circling Mars to send data to and from the Red Planet. Without the constellation of five orbiters, the agency would not have been able to land its rovers on Mars or guide them through its terrain. Although the White House is keen on advancing human missions to the Martian surface, it also wants to get rid of that vital lifeline
The Mars Relay Network is a fleet of orbiters equipped with radio systems powered by the Sun to maintain regular contact with Earth. It’s an interconnected system that relays data between rovers and landers on the surface of Mars, transmitting it tens of millions of miles through space to radio antennas located on Earth. “Every image seen from the surface of Mars since 2004 has been transmitted through the Mars Relay Network,” according to NASA. The international orbital squad, which includes NASA’s Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN, and the European Space Agency’s Mars Express and ExoMars, would play a vital role in human missions to Mars. Three of them, however, are at risk of termination due to funding.
NASA is preparing for severe cuts under the White House’s proposed budget for 2026. The budget, released in May, highlights the administration’s “objectives of returning to the Moon before China and putting a man on Mars.” It also reduces NASA’s upcoming budget by $6 billion compared to 2025.
The impending cuts would significantly affect the budget for Mars-focused science missions, terminating funding for two of the NASA orbiters and one ESA spacecraft to recoup the cost of the network’s ongoing operations, Forbes reported. “We have not yet received direction from NASA HQ to stop work on these [Mars Relay] projects, and we wait for further instruction,” Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA’s leading-edge Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, told Forbes.
Under the proposed budget, NASA’s planetary science budget would drop from $2.7 billion to $1.9 billion. On the other hand, the agency’s human space exploration budget received an additional $647 million compared to the 2025 budget. Judging by the allocation of funding, the administration is clearly failing to understand that ongoing science missions to Mars are crucial to achieving a human presence on the Red Planet.
The Mars Relay Network is part of NASA’s main infrastructure to communicate with Mars; decommissioning three of the orbiters would significantly reduce the network’s capacity. Given the complexity of the proposed first human missions to another planet, the communications network should be expanded to ensure precision and not the other way round.
It may be that the current administration would favor a commercial substitute to NASA’s Mars Relay Network. In late 2024, NASA revealed that it was studying proposals for communication networks to set up in Mars’ orbit, including a pitch by SpaceX for a Marslink constellation (similar to the company’s Starlink in Earth orbit). Either way, NASA would no doubt need to update its current Mars communications system to support human missions. It would make more sense, however, to give the agency more funding as it contemplates landing humans on another planet for the first time.
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