# The Commercial Case for Mars  ## Metadata - Author: Jeff Foust - Full Title: The Commercial Case for Mars - Category: #articles - Document Tags: #mars-development #politics & society #science #spacepower #technology - Summary: Companies and NASA are moving toward commercially run Mars missions. NASA proposed $200 million for Commercial Mars Payload Services and Congress added $700 million for a Mars telecom orbiter. Industry interest is high but non-government customers are few, so cheaper telecom and transport are needed to grow the market. - URL: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5045/1 ## Highlights - “Somewhere between 70 and 80% of what we’ve proven and learned to get to the Moon is directly applicable to Mars,” Firefly’s Ferring said, “and to go solve that extra 20 to 30% is a thing to do, but it’s not impossible.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k63mpcvfnwskxa0e2qa17egz)) - On August 7, the Italian space agency ASI announced it had signed an agreement with SpaceX to send payloads to Mars on what it said would be the first Starship missions designed to transport commercial payloads to the planet. Those payloads would include a radiation sensor, plant growth experiment, and weather monitoring station. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k63mkjcrre91db2p5a1c1vnk)) - When NASA released its detailed fiscal year 2026 budget proposal in late May, it included $200 million for a new effort called Commercial Mars Payload Services (CMPS). That would be modeled on the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program for lunar lander missions, but the budget provided few other details about how CMPS would work other than to say that “near-term efforts will focus funding on supporting the maturation of commercial robotic Mars lander concepts.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k63mmvq86sb3hkm8cnm7hhte))