For more than 20 years, NASA has relied on a network of spacecraft orbiting Mars to send data to and from the Red Planet. Without the constellation of five orbiters, the agency would not be able to land its rovers on Mars or guide them through its terrain. While the White House is interested in advancing human missions to the Martian surface, it also wants to get rid of this vital line of communication.
The Martian Relay Network is a fleet of orbiters equipped with solar-powered radio systems to maintain regular communication with Earth. It is an interconnected system that relays data between the rovers and landers on the surface of Mars, transmitting it tens of millions of kilometers through space to radio antennas located on Earth. “Every image captured from the surface of Mars since 2004 has been transmitted via the Mars Relay Network,” NASA said. The International Orbiter Detachment, which includes NASA’s Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN spacecraft, as well as the European Space Agency’s Mars Express and ExoMars, is supposed to play a vital role in human missions to Mars. Three of them, however, are under threat of termination due to lack of funding.
NASA is preparing for major cuts as part of the White House’s proposed 2026 budget. The budget, released in May, emphasizes the administration’s “goals of returning to the moon before China and landing a man on Mars.” It also cuts NASA’s future budget by $6 billion compared to 2025.
The looming cuts will significantly affect the budget for Mars-focused science missions, ending funding for two NASA orbiters and one ESA spacecraft to recoup the costs of the network’s ongoing operations, Forbes reports. “We have not yet received instructions from NASA headquarters to stop working on these [Mars Relay] projects, and we are awaiting further instructions,” Roy Gladden, Mars Relay network manager at NASA’s advanced Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, told Forbes, according to Forbes.
According to the proposed budget, NASA’s planetary science budget would be reduced from $2.7 billion to $1.9 billion. On the other hand, the agency’s budget for human space exploration received an additional $647 million compared to the 2025 budget. Judging by the distribution of funding, the administration clearly does not understand that ongoing scientific missions to Mars are crucial to achieving a human presence on the Red Planet.
The Mars Relay Network is part of NASA’s core infrastructure for communication with Mars; decommissioning three orbiters will significantly reduce the network’s capacity. Given the complexity of the proposed first human missions to another planet, the communications network must be expanded to ensure accuracy, not the other way around.
Perhaps the current administration will favor a commercial replacement for NASA’s Mars Relay Network. At the end of 2024, NASA announced that it was studying proposals for establishing communications networks in Mars orbit, including SpaceX’s proposal for a Marslink constellation (similar to Starlink in Earth orbit). In any case, NASA will undoubtedly need to upgrade its current communication system on Mars to support manned missions. However, it would be more appropriate to provide the agency with more funding as it plans to land humans on another planet for the first time.
