NASA has suspended work on its Mars Telecommunications Network contract with Blue Origin after Rocket Lab filed a formal protest over the award. The programme, a roughly $700 million effort to build and operate a communications orbiter for Mars, is now on hold while the Government Accountability Office reviews the challenge, raising fresh schedule pressure on a planned December 2028 launch window.
Rocket Lab’s protest centres on NASA’s eligibility and source-selection decisions for the deep-space communications contract. The filing triggered an automatic statutory stay, which stopped work while the dispute moves through the GAO process. Blue Origin had been selected to design, build, launch and operate the Mars Telecommunications Network, a spacecraft intended to relay communications and navigation data for future Mars missions.
The suspension creates delay risk for a programme tied to NASA’s broader Mars exploration architecture. Coverage in late September indicated that NASA was already treating the contract as currently suspended, with the pause potentially compressing Blue Origin’s schedule if the protest is not resolved quickly. Blue Origin has maintained its commitment to deliver the spacecraft by the end of 2028, but the review period could complicate that timetable.