NASA Splits $1.07 Billion in Ka-Band Relay Contracts Across Three Orbits

NASA has awarded firm-fixed-price contracts worth up to $1.07 billion to Viasat, SES and Astranis Space Technologies to develop commercial Ka-band space relay capability, the agency announced on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, from Cleveland.

The awards mark the decisive phase of NASA's shift away from its government-owned Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) fleet toward private multi-orbit networks. The Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program's Communications Services Project (CSP) administers the procurement, awarded under the NextSTEP-3 Broad Agency Announcement Appendix E.

The contract ceilings split three ways across three distinct orbital regimes:

• Viasat Inc. — $460.9 million. The largest single allocation funds design of a high-capacity geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) relay architecture built on Viasat's high-throughput satellite fleet.
• Global Enterprise Solutions Inc. / SES Space & Defense — $340.4 million. This award establishes medium Earth orbit (MEO) relay capability concepts using the software-defined O3b mPOWER constellation.
• Astranis Space Technologies Corp. — $264.3 million. Astranis brings its dedicated MicroGEO satellite architecture to offer targeted, low-cost geostationary relay services.

Why is NASA buying commercial relay capacity?

The TDRS spacecraft are approaching end-of-life, and NASA has spent years laying the groundwork for their retirement. The agency wants commercial relay capacity to carry communications for science satellites, orbital observatories and human spaceflight missions — without forcing major redesigns of the flight transceivers already installed on those spacecraft.

That constraint shapes the whole procurement. NASA is not simply buying bandwidth; it is buying compatibility with a large installed base of Ka-band mission hardware. The three contracts each test a different commercial answer to that requirement, spanning GEO, MEO and a low-cost small-satellite variant of GEO service.

The initiative builds on earlier demonstrations funded through CSP. SES Government Solutions received an initial CSP demonstration award, and Viasat recently launched its Maxwell satellite to validate high-capacity space-to-space links. Those demonstrations de-risked the technology now moving into full concept development.

What does the change mean for LEO missions?

The practical question is what this changes for low Earth orbit mission operators. The answer: a path to continued relay coverage after the TDRS fleet retires, delivered by commercial vendors across multiple orbits rather than by a single government constellation. Mission planners gain architectural diversity — GEO high-throughput capacity from Viasat, MEO low-latency routes via O3b mPOWER, and low-cost dedicated MicroGEO services from Astranis.

The dollar figures are ceilings, not guaranteed payments. The firm-fixed-price structure caps NASA's exposure while keeping the agency's priced options in hand.

A tight schedule through 2029

All three contractors begin with a six-month concept maturation phase running from November 4, 2026, through May 3, 2027. NASA holds priced options that can fund subsequent hardware fabrication and on-orbit flight demonstrations through 2029.

That timeline is deliberate. The agency needs validated commercial space relays in operation ahead of formal TDRS fleet retirement, which leaves roughly three years to move from paper concepts to demonstrated on-orbit capability.

The three-orbit split also functions as a hedge. If any one architecture stumbles in development or flight demonstration, NASA retains two parallel paths to continuity of service for its LEO missions.

By mid-2027, the industry will know which concepts NASA judges worth carrying into hardware fabrication — and by 2029, whether commercial Ka-band relay can stand in fully for a government constellation that has served NASA missions for decades.