NASA awarded Blue Origin, the space company led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a firm-fixed-price contract worth up to $700 million, or approximately ¥111.3 billion, to develop the Mars Telecommunications Network, or MTN. The company will design, launch and operate the system, including a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter based on its Blue Ring platform, and must deliver the spacecraft by December 31, 2028. NASA expects the high-bandwidth network to be operating at Mars by 2030. MTN is intended to relay science data, imagery, navigation information and mission communications for spacecraft on and around Mars. NASA's existing relay network now relies on four orbiters after the agency ended MAVEN's mission in June; every image returned from the Martian surface since 2004 has passed through the network. Blue Origin's selection expands its role beyond launch and lunar missions into Mars infrastructure, while Rocket Lab, which pitched its Explorer platform and built NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, did not win the competition.