NASA Awards Up to $1.07 Billion for Commercial Ka-Band Relays to Succeed TDRS

Several of NASA's most important spacecraft send their data home through a relay network the agency is gradually retiring. On Wednesday, Nov. 4, NASA took a concrete step toward replacing it. The agency selected three companies to develop commercial Ka-band relay capability meant to take over from the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) fleet. There is one hard requirement: the new service must work with missions already flying, without anyone touching their onboard systems.

The winners are Astranis Space Technologies Corp., Global Enterprise Solutions Inc. and Viasat Inc. Their maximum contract values are $264.3 million, $340.4 million and $460.9 million. Added together, that is about $1.0656 billion if NASA exercises every option. Aviation Week rounded the potential total to $1.065 billion; others rounded it to $1.07 billion.

What NASA actually bought

The awards are firm-fixed-price contracts under NextSTEP-3 Appendix E, an effort NASA calls NEXUS, short for Network Extension for User Continuity and Sustainability. The work is managed through the Communications Services Project in NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program. NASA's release says the program supports the planned retirement of the TDRS fleet.

The headline numbers are ceilings, not committed spending. The base period of performance runs from Nov. 4, 2026 through May 3, 2027, with priced options extending through 2029. Each contract lets NASA add funding up to the award limit to move a company from concept work to an in-orbit demonstration. In other words, the structure gives the agency room to stop or continue at each stage.

Via Satellite describes the broad agency announcement as having three phases:

Phase 1: a six-month period of concept maturation and risk reduction.
Phase 2 (option): up to two years of system integration, flight demonstration and verification.
Phase 3 (option): up to six more months of demonstration and service validation.

The scope is wide. According to MLQ.ai, NEXUS covers the space segment, ground and network infrastructure, launch where needed, integration, and operations and maintenance. NASA isn't buying a satellite. It wants a complete service that it can subscribe to.

The backward-compatibility problem

The most demanding part of the solicitation is compatibility. Via Satellite reports that NASA wants an end-to-end Ka-band relay that is backward-compatible with legacy TDRS system users for at least 15 years. NASA's release says the service is needed for in-orbit missions that cannot feasibly modify flight hardware or move to non-compatible commercial services. Spacecraft built years ago to talk to TDRS have radios, antennas and protocols fixed at launch.

That is a demanding engineering constraint. A commercial provider can't define its own interface and ask users to adapt. It has to look like TDRS to spacecraft that only know how to talk to TDRS, while running on commercial infrastructure.

The legacy network still carries serious traffic. Via Satellite notes that TDRS supports the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope, and it is expected to keep supporting current missions into the mid-2030s. It also stopped taking on new missions in late 2024. The fleet is in managed decline: still essential for the missions it already serves, but closed to new ones.

Who the winners are

The three companies come from different corners of the satellite industry. Per Aviation Week, Astranis is based in San Francisco, Viasat in Carlsbad, California, and Global Enterprise Solutions in Reston, Virginia.

NASA's release names that third company only as Global Enterprise Solutions Inc. Via Satellite and Aviation Week both identify it as SES's government-facing arm, which Via Satellite calls SES Space & Defense. NASA's announcement doesn't make that link itself.

Two of the three already work with this NASA office. Via Satellite reports that SES and Viasat received Communications Services Project contracts in 2022, when NASA started the project to explore commercial options for replacing TDRS.

The dollar figures differ by company, with Viasat's ceiling about 1.7 times Astranis's. Neither NASA nor the trade coverage cited here explains how the ceilings were set. NASA describes them as maximum potential values including all options, so they are best read as ceilings, not a ranking.

Why It Matters

TDRS is one of the less visible but critical pieces of NASA's infrastructure. Aviation Week describes the geosynchronous network as built to provide continuous communications with NASA's most critical low-Earth-orbit missions. It currently supports the space station and Hubble. Losing that capability without a replacement wouldn't be a small inconvenience.

NASA's chosen path is to buy the capability as a service from commercial providers rather than rely on the aging government fleet. The notable constraint here is that the commercial service must serve existing users who can't change. Getting that right would let NASA retire aging government satellites without stranding the missions that depend on them.

The contract structure also shows how cautious NASA is being. The initial period runs six months, through May 3, 2027, and covers concept development and risk reduction. Later work, including an in-orbit flight demonstration, depends on NASA exercising priced options. The $1.07 billion figure is the ceiling, so what NASA actually spends will depend on which options it exercises.

The timeline is what to watch. TDRS is expected to serve current missions into the mid-2030s, and NASA wants at least 15 years of backward compatibility from whatever comes next. Priced options under these contracts run through 2029. That leaves a gap to manage between proving a relay works in orbit and needing it to carry missions that, for now, have no other way to get their data down.