NASA Seeks Proposals for Commercial Mars Data Relay Satellites

One possible area for improvement is laser or optical communications. NASA successfully demonstrated laser communications technology in October 2013 with its Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission.

LADEE made history using a pulsed laser beam to transmit data over 239,000 miles from the moon to Earth at a record-breaking download rate of 622 megabits-per-second (Mbps).

NASA has issued a Request for Information (RFI) to investigate the possibility of using commercial Mars-orbiting satellites to provide telecommunications capabilities for future robotic missions to the Red Planet.

"We are looking to broaden participation in the exploration of Mars to include new models for government and commercial partnerships," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

"Depending on the outcome, the new model could be a vital component in future science missions and the path for humans to Mars."

The RFI details possible new business models that would involve NASA contracting to purchase services from a commercial service provider, which would own and operate one or more communication relay orbiters.

The solicitation is open to all types of organizations including U.S. industry, universities, nonprofits, NASA centers, and federally funded research and development centers, in addition to U.S. government and international organizations.

NASA is interested in exploring alternative models to sustain and evolve its Mars' communications relay infrastructure to avoid a communications gap in the 2020s.

The RFI encourages innovative ideas for cost-effective approaches that provide relay services for existing landers, as well as significantly improving communications performance.

Lisa May

Mars landers and rovers currently transmit their science data and other information to Earth either by a direct communication link or via orbiting satellites acting as relay stations.

The direct link is severely limited because of mass, volume, and power limits on the rovers.

To address these limits, NASA's Mars Exploration Program currently uses relay radios on its Mars science orbiters.

The spacecraft carry high-gain antennas and higher power transmitters that provide very high-rate, energy-efficient links between orbiters and surface missions as the obiters pass overhead.

Mars Reconnassaince Orbiter (MRO)

MARS Relay Strategy
"The current Mars relay strategy has been extremely successful in providing the science and engineering data returned from the Martian surface over the past decade," said Lisa May, lead program executive for NASA's Mars Exploration Program.

Because NASA has launched science orbiters to Mars on a steady cadence, the current strategy has been cost effective.

MAVEN

However, NASA has no scheduled Mars science orbiters after MAVEN arrives on the Red Planet in the fall.

This creates the need to identify cost-effective options to ensure continuity of reliable, high-performance telecommunications relay services for the future.

"Looking ahead, we need to seriously explore the possibility of the commercialization of Mars communications services," said May.

"This will offer advantages to NASA, while also providing appropriate return-on-investment to the service provider."

NASA RFI: External Concepts for mission to Europa - the oceanic Jovian moon

This image shows two views of the trailing hemisphere of Jupiter's ice-covered satellite, Europa. 

The left image shows the approximate natural colour appearance of Europa. 

The image on the right is a false-color composite version combining violet, green and infrared images to enhance colour differences in the predominantly water-ice crust of Europa. 

Credit: NASA/JPL/DLR

NASA has issued a Request for Information (RFI) to science and engineering communities for ideas for a mission to Europa that could address fundamental questions of the enigmatic moon and the search for life beyond Earth.

The RFI's focus is for concepts for a mission to Europa that costs less than $1 billion, excluding the launch vehicle that can meet as many of the science priorities as possible recommended by the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey for the study of Europa.

"This is an opportunity to hear from those creative teams that have ideas on how we can achieve the most science at minimum cost," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

"Europa is one of the most interesting sites in our solar system in the search for life beyond Earth. The drive to explore Europa has stimulated not only scientific interest but also the ingenuity of engineers and scientists with innovative concepts."

NASA has studied a variety of mission designs and concepts in previous years and currently is funding the development of technologies that will be needed for the science instruments for a Europa mission.

Congress appropriated $80 million for this work in Fiscal Year 2014, and the Fiscal Year 2015 budget proposal requests an additional $15 million.

Previous scientific findings point to the existence of a liquid water ocean located under the moon's icy crust. This ocean covers Europa entirely and contains more liquid water than all of Earth's oceans combined.

The Decadal Survey deemed a mission to the Jupiter moon as among the highest priority scientific pursuits for NASA.

It lists five key science objectives in priority order that are necessary to improve our understanding of this potentially habitable moon.

The mission will need to:

• Characterise the extent of the ocean and its relation to the deeper interior
• Characterise the ice shell and any subsurface water, including their heterogeneity, and the nature of surface-ice-ocean exchange
• Determine global surface, compositions and chemistry, especially as related to habitability
• Understand the formation of surface features, including sites of recent or current activity, identify and characterise candidate sites for future detailed exploration
• Understand Europa's space environment and interaction with the magnetosphere.

Although Europa and Jupiter's other moons have been visited by other spacecraft, they were each limited to a single distant flyby of these satellites.

NASA's Galileo spacecraft, launched in 1989 by the space shuttle, was the only mission to make repeated visits to Europa, passing close by the moon fewer than a dozen times.

In December 2013, ESA /NASA's Hubble Space Telescope observed water vapor above the moon's frigid south polar region.

This provided the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's surface, although researchers are still working to verify the existence of these plumes.

Any mission to Europa must take into account the harsh radiation environment that would require unique protection of the spacecraft and instruments.

In addition, spacecraft must meet planetary protection requirements intended to protect Europa's potentially habitable ocean.

These requirements are very strict and involve ensuring that a viable Earth organism is not introduced into the Europa ocean.

The RFI is not a request for proposal or formal procurement and therefore is not a solicitation or commitment by the government. Deadline to submit the mission concepts is May 30.