NASA Awards Three Ka-Band Relay Concept Contracts Worth Up to $1.0656 Billion

NASA selected Viasat, SES Space & Defense and Astranis Space Technologies on 4 November 2026. It contracted the second under its legal name, Global Enterprise Solutions Inc. The work sits under the NextSTEP-3 Broad Agency Announcement, Appendix E. It runs through the agency's SCaN program and its Communications Services Project. Viasat holds the largest maximum potential value at $460.9 million. SES Space & Defense holds $340.4 million and Astranis $264.3 million. All three are firm-fixed-price awards. Each company must show it can serve existing spacecraft without forcing NASA to modify onboard systems.

Why NASA is buying instead of building

NASA is buying a relay service rather than owning relay satellites. Under firm-fixed-price terms, the three companies absorb cost overruns on the base work. Designs must also work with spacecraft already in orbit.

The program exists because NASA is retiring its Tracking and Data Relay Satellite fleet. It is moving future missions onto commercial services. TDRS relays data for the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope and other missions. Via Satellite reported the fleet stopped onboarding new missions in late 2024. NASA's solicitation says the agency intends to acquire an end-to-end Ka-band relay service. It must stay backward-compatible with legacy TDRSS users for at least 15 years. It wants solutions covering space, ground, launch, operations and integration. It wants to buy them as one of many customers in the commercial marketplace.

NASA says Ka-band services are needed for select in-orbit missions that cannot feasibly modify flight hardware or move to non-compatible commercial services.

What the money actually buys

The initial period of performance runs from 4 November 2026 through 3 May 2027. It is a six-month concept maturation and risk reduction phase. NASA holds priced options to fund system integration, flight demonstration and verification, and further work through 2029. The Broad Agency Announcement sets out three phases. The first is concept maturation. An option covers up to two years of integration and flight demonstration. A further option covers up to six months for anomaly resolution and service validation. The published values are maximum potential values. They include options the agency may never exercise.

The spread between the bids

Viasat's ceiling is 1.74 times Astranis's, a gap of $196.6 million. SES Space & Defense sits $120.5 million below Viasat and $76.1 million above Astranis. The three awards also map to different orbital regimes, according to SatNews. Viasat maps to geostationary orbit. SES Space & Defense maps to medium Earth orbit using its O3b mPOWER constellation. Astranis maps to its MicroGEO architecture.

What happens next

The concept phase closes on 3 May 2027. NASA then decides whether to exercise options toward a flight demonstration. NASA has given no hard retirement date for the TDRS fleet.

The TDRS fleet keeps flying in the meantime. NASA expects it to support current missions into the mid-2030s.