Viasat, SES Space & Defense and Astranis win NASA Ka-band relay contracts
NASA · Viasat · SES Space & Defense · Astranis
NASA picked three companies to develop commercial Ka-band relay concepts succeeding its aging TDRS fleet.
what happened
NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program awarded firm-fixed-price contracts for Ka-band space relay capability concepts to Viasat ($460.9 million), SES Space & Defense, doing business as Global Enterprise Solutions ($340.4 million), and Astranis ($264.3 million), under the NextSTEP-3 Broad Agency Announcement Appendix E, per Via Satellite and Space & Defense. The initial period runs November 4, 2026 through May 3, 2027, with an option to extend through 2029, under the Communications Services Project, which aims to replace NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) fleet while keeping Ka-band service backward-compatible for missions "that cannot feasibly modify flight hardware or transition to non-compatible commercial services"; TDRS, which serves the ISS and Hubble, stopped onboarding new missions in late 2024. NASA retains the option to fund further work advancing the concepts to in-orbit flight demonstrations.
why it matters
Three distinct commercial relay bets now compete to succeed TDRS, the backbone of NASA's own satellite communications; whichever concepts NASA funds toward flight demonstration will shape which commercial relay networks government and other operators can buy into for years. The nine-figure awards are a trajectory-changing procurement for each company, particularly Astranis and SES Space & Defense, whose futures in this line of business now hinge on the follow-on phases.