NASA TDRS satellites with the Hubble Telescope and ISS. Photo illustration: NASA

NASA will stop onboarding new missions to its Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system in November. NASA announced the change on Wednesday, which is effective as of November 8. 

TDRS will still support existing missions. Its current users include the International Space Station (ISS), Hubble Space Telescope. These missions will still rely on TDRS until the mid-2030s. 

The TDRS constellation enables data transfer between NASA missions and Earth, relaying astronaut conversations from the ISS, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope, and more. The TDRS fleet began more than 40 years ago in 1983 and consists of three generations of satellites. There are currently seven TDRS satellites in operation and the last one, TDRS-13, was launched in August of 2017. 

NASA is working with commercial providers to develop and demonstrate space relay capabilities to replace TDRS with commercial services used by both NASA and other customers. In 2022, NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program awarded $278.5 million in contracts to Inmarsat Government, Kuiper Government Solutions, SES Government Solutions, SpaceX, Telesat U.S. Services, and Viasat to develop these commercial services in the Communications Services Project (CSP). 

The goal is to validate and deliver space-based commercial communications services to the Near Space Network by 2031 to support future NASA missions.   

“TDRS will continue to provide critical support for at least the next decade, but now is the time to embrace commercial services that could enhance science objectives, expand experimentation, and ultimately provide greater opportunities for discovery,” Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s SCaN program commented. 

NASA is also looking to non-reimbursable Space Act Agreements with industry players, like one signed with Kepler Communications earlier this month to give NASA insight into Kepler’s space data-relay capabilities. 

In June, SES demonstrated space data relay between an SES O3b mPOWER satellite in Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO), and a Planet satellite in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). This demonstration was part of the CSP.