“Opportunity Unlimited: NASA’s Conversion of $11B Mars Mission Sparks Excitement in Space Startups”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has pronounced the agency’s $11 billion, 15-year mission to collect and return samples from Mars: insufficient.
But the strategy shift could be a huge boon to space startups, to which much of that planned funding will almost certainly be redirected.
(There’s plenty of time to save and repurpose the most important concepts and research already done by NASA and its partners.)
But the official announcement, and the implication that it is the new generation of space companies that will accomplish ambitious goals like a there-and-back trip to Mars, must be very validating.
Whatever that new plan may be, it will almost certainly rely far more than before on commercial services and hardware.
