Mars Telecommunications Orbiter

History

• ** Narrow Angle Camera:**- Support canister detection
• Orbiting Sample Demonstration Canister: - Technology demonstration

The Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) was initially a cancelled Mars mission that was originally intended to launch in 2009 and would have established an Interplanetary Internet between Earth and Mars. The spacecraft would have arrived in a high orbit above Mars in 2010 and relayed data packets to Earth from a variety of Mars landers, rovers and orbiters for as long as ten years, at an extremely high data rate. Such a dedicated communications satellite was thought to be necessary due to the vast quantity of scientific information to be sent to Earth by landers such as the Mars Science Laboratory.

On July 21, 2005, it was announced that MTO had been canceled due to the need to support other short-term goals, including a Hubble servicing mission, Mars Exploration Rover extended mission operations, launching Mars Science Laboratory in 2009, and to prevent Earth science mission Glory from being cancelled.

Data transfer technology

The initial Mars Telecommunications Orbiter would have carried a Mars Laser Communication Demonstration to demonstrate laser communication in space (optical communications), instead of usual radiowaves. "Lasercom sends information using beams of light and optical elements, such as telescopes and optical amplifiers, rather than RF signals, amplifiers, and antennas."

The original MTO would have had two 15 W X-band radio transmitters, and two Ka-band radio transmitters (35 W operational, and 100 W experimental).

Proposed successors

After the cancellation, a broader mission was proposed as the Mars Science and Telecommunications Orbiter. However, this mission was soon criticized as lacking well-defined parameters and objectives. Another mission, the 2013 Mars Science Orbiter, had also been proposed, though it would never be carried out.

The communications capability provided by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Express science missions has proven substantial, demonstrating that dedicated relay satellites may be unnecessary in the near future. The two newest science orbiters are the MAVEN, which arrived to Mars on September 21, 2014, with an Electra transceiver; and the 2016 European ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, that also carries an Electra UHF band transceiver. However, these orbiters follow science orbits that are not designed for relay communications.

In 2014, there was a concern in NASA that the currently used relay satellite, Mars Odyssey, may fail, resulting in the need to press MAVEN science orbiter into use as the backup telecommunications relay, however, the highly elliptical orbit of MAVEN would limit its usefulness as a relay for operating landers on the surface.

In 2018, a Next Mars Orbiter (NeMO) was proposed by NASA. NeMO is to be a dedicated telecommunications orbiter with a robust science package, which was expected to launch in 2022. It was anticipated to employ a laser communication subsystem, that was successfully tested aboard the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission in 2013. This project is currently on hiatus as of 2025.

Revival

On July 4, 2025 (nearly twenty years after the project had initially been cancelled), the MTO mission was revived following the signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act by U.S. President Donald Trump. The act has allocated $700 million for the development of a new MTO, which will be dually-used for both a Mars Sample Return mission and future crewed Mars missions. The MTO will be procured through a fixed-price contact from commercial partners who previously received funding from NASA for design studies for a Mars Sample Return Mission that proposed a telecommunication orbiter as a part of their proposed mission. That makes a maximum of eight companies eligible, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Quantum Space, Rocket Lab, SpaceX and Whittinghill Aerospace.

On August 12, 2025, Blue Origin, an aerospace company that has partnered with NASA in previous missions, announced a proposed MTO mission that would fulfill NASA's new requirements. It would be based on Blue Origin's Blue Ring Satellite Platform supplemented by a yet unclarified small number of deployable UHF relay satellites that would enable it to provide wide-area coverage. It is envisioned by Blue Origin to be operational by 2028.

References

References

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