Moon & Mars Mondays · your week on the Moon and Mars

From The Decisional Pass

Nothing launched to the Moon or to Mars last week. Four things changed anyway, and every one was about who holds the other end of a line. A radio link, an org chart, a contract, a badge.

Start with the radio link. It's the one nobody thinks about.

Almost everything Mars says goes through a 2001 spacecraft

Ask anyone what's at Mars and you'll hear about the rovers. The rovers barely talk to Earth. They talk to whatever happens to be flying over.

2001 Mars Odyssey launched on 7 April 2001 and reached Mars orbit that October. About 85 percent of everything Spirit and Opportunity ever sent home went through it, and it has relayed for Curiosity and InSight since. It's the longest continuously operating spacecraft in orbit around any planet but ours. Mission planners once figured its propellant would run out around the end of 2025.

The only other NASA workhorse up there is Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, with MAVEN and ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter filling in. JPL's relay manager Roy Gladden calls it a "bent pipe," which is exactly what it is. The surface missions shout upward, something overhead catches it and throws it at Earth.

Earlier this month NASA picked Blue Origin to build the replacement. $700 million for the Mars Telecommunications Network, which despite the name is one spacecraft. Congress funded it in July 2025, NASA issued the request for proposals in May, and the award requires delivery no later than 31 December 2028, working at Mars by 2030.

On 11 September, Rocket Lab filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. Its public argument was blunt: NASA's decision "appears to be inconsistent with the eligibility criteria mandated by Congress," and the agency's "punitive review of Rocket Lab's technical volume was inconsistent, making incorrect assertions and conclusions."

Here's the part that matters more than who wins. Filing triggers an automatic stay, so Blue Origin stops work while the GAO decides, and the GAO gets up to 100 days. That's a ruling around mid-December. A 2028 delivery for a 2030 arrival was already a tight schedule, and roughly three months of stopped work comes straight out of it.

Blue Origin has stood exactly where Rocket Lab is now. It protested NASA's Artemis lander award to SpaceX in 2021, lost at the GAO that July, lost in court in November, and won the second lander contract in 2023 regardless. Protests rarely flip an award. They reliably cost time.

In China, the crewed side now runs the robots

On 23 May, China Manned Space Agency spokesman Zhang Jingbo said the country's crewed lunar landing effort and its robotic Chang'e work would be merged "across three areas of missions, resources, and teams."

Watch what that looks like in practice. When Chang'e 7 stood down in August, the statement that it "does not meet launch conditions" came from CMSA, the human spaceflight agency, not from CNSA. And on 10 September, Andrew Jones reported from The Hague that the human spaceflight agency is now reconfiguring the robotic Moon landing programme after taking overall authority for lunar missions, with Chang'e 8 among the missions being altered.

Chang'e 8 is the one that was meant to prove you can live there: a lander, a rover, a 100 kg roving robot, resource experiments including 3D-printing bricks out of regolith, and 200 kg set aside for 11 international partners. It's scheduled for 2028 or 2029 on a Long March 5.

China's stated goal is a crewed landing before 2030. When one organisation owns both halves, the robotic missions stop being science that happens to be near the Moon and start being reconnaissance for the crew. That isn't a criticism. It's a different set of requirements, and requirements are what move hardware.

Somebody has to pick the spot

NASA opened landing site selection for SkyFall, the Mars helicopter mission. The first workshop is 9 to 10 February 2027, virtual, and anyone can propose a site beforehand. Proposals that clear the engineering constraints get presented, and a second workshop follows later in 2027.

I like this a lot. The engineering box is fixed and published, and then the argument about where to go happens in the open.

Nobody said the word retire

On 9 September, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover became NASA's first astronaut emeriti. They aren't flying again, and they haven't left either.

Glover has taken an administrative post at Cal Poly and is giving NASA his Orion knowledge for nothing. "You can be paid or you can be a gratis service, which is compensation waived, and that's what I'm doing," he told collectSPACE. He keeps a badge, turns up to sim runs, and reapplies for the status every year.

Wiseman logged 174 days in space, Glover 176. Jeremy Hansen has stepped back from his full-time CSA role, which leaves Christina Koch as the only active NASA astronaut of the four who flew past the Moon. Artemis II's post-flight work is finished. "Artemis II is done," Glover said.

Which leaves a real operations problem. Four people know what it is actually like to live in that capsule, and Artemis III is no earlier than mid-2027. NASA's answer is a badge and a one-year renewal. Not elegant. Much better than a farewell photo.

References

• Rocket Lab protests NASA's decision to award Blue Origin $700 million Mars orbiter contract — Space.com, Mike Wall, 11 September 2026
• Rocket Lab protests NASA award of Mars telecom orbiter contract — SpaceNews, Jeff Foust, 12 September 2026
• Rocket Lab Files GAO Bid Protest Over NASA's $700M Mars Orbiter Award to Blue Origin — SatNews, 14 September 2026
• The Mars Relay Network Connects Us to NASA's Martian Explorers — NASA/JPL, 16 February 2021
• Odyssey: transmitted about 85 percent of the data from Spirit and Opportunity — The Planetary Society, accessed 14 September 2026
• 2001 Mars Odyssey: launch 7 April 2001, Mars orbit 24 October 2001, longest continuously active spacecraft at another planet — accessed 14 September 2026
• China alters Chang'e-8 lunar south pole mission amid lunar program reorganization — SpaceNews, Andrew Jones, 10 September 2026
• China shakes up its space programs to land astronauts on the moon by 2030: 'We will spare no effort' — Space.com, Leonard David, 27 May 2026
• China's Chang'e-7 launch will not proceed in planned window this year — CGTN, 23 August 2026
• SkyFall Landing Site Workshop — NASA Mars Exploration Program, accessed 14 September 2026
• Artemis II commander and pilot become NASA's first astronaut emeriti — Ars Technica, Robert Pearlman, 10 September 2026

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