WASHINGTON — A constellation of commercial satellites could serve as a communications relay system for future NASA missions, such as an orbiter later this decade to search for subsurface ice on Mars.

NASA solicited proposals for studies of commercial approaches to carrying out some aspects of Mars exploration, including delivery of payloads and communications and imaging services. Credit: NASA ...

Two space-focused companies have joined SpaceX in the race to get a mission to Mars. Impulse Space Inc. and Relativity Space have joined forces per a video and several tweets announcing the juncture.

NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is starting to experience the kinds of cost overruns that have plagued previous high-profile space projects such as the Space Launch System and the James Webb Space ...

Mars exploration has always been the exclusive purview of national space agencies, but NASA is trying to change that, awarding a dozen research tasks to private companies as a prelude to commercial ...

NASA is expanding its plans for Mars, looking at not only a big, high-budget, long-term project to bring back a sample from Mars but also smaller, lower-cost missions to enable exploration of the red ...

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 ...