Mars 2022 – Spaceflight Now

August 21, 2026

Breaking News

[ August 20, 2026 ] Last-minute abort stalls Cape Canaveral Starlink mission Falcon 9
[ August 19, 2026 ] LandSpace becomes first commercial Chinese company to land an orbital-class booster Mission Reports
[ August 18, 2026 ] Astronauts remove failed antenna; run out of time to install a spare News
[ August 18, 2026 ] SpaceX exceeds 11,000 satellites in low Earth orbit Falcon 9
[ August 15, 2026 ] SpaceX launches record-breaking back-to-back Falcon 9 rockets for Globalstar, U.S. Space Force Falcon 9

NASA developing plans for commercially-built Mars orbiter

July 27, 2016 Stephen Clark

NASA is advancing a plan to send a robotic orbiter to Mars in the early 2020s, developing designs with five U.S. satellite makers for a mission to extend high-resolution mapping capabilities, telecommunications relay functions, and potentially act as a waypoint for Martian soil samples destined for return to Earth.

NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

March 3, 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA officials want the agency’s next Mars orbiter to pull double duty as a communications relay station for a fleet of surface landers and as a trailblazer for a future round-trip sample return mission and human expeditions to the red planet.