As government programs and private ventures lay the groundwork for a sustained presence on the moon, a handful of commercial space pioneers are starting to turn their attention further afield.
Mars promises a new frontier for commerce, spanning resource extraction to scientific services, even as its commercial viability remains far more distant and uncertain than the moon’s.
SpaceX has been one of the loudest voices championing a commercial path to the Red Planet, aiming to launch its first Starships there as early as 2026 — if it can overcome development challenges with the world’s largest rocket.
But beyond Elon Musk’s vision, few companies are seriously exploring how to build viable businesses beyond the moon as they grapple with uncertain timelines and questionable investment returns.
The Mars pioneers
Among the most notable are Impulse Space and Relativity Space, which plan to launch the first fully privately funded robotic mission to Mars in 2028.
Impulse is developing the cruise stage, entry capsule and lander for a robotic spacecraft that would launch on a Relativity Terran R rocket, which is awaiting its maiden flight.
Private lunar lander ventures such as Astrobotic are also studying how their technology might be repurposed for Martian conditions. Novaspace senior consultant Maria Shaw told SpaceNews that many of the heavy-lift systems, habitats, life support systems and in-situ resource utilization technologies being built for the moon are directly relevant to Mars, but the markets are distinct enough to require separate investment streams.
Moon-related businesses have raised around $1.2 billion in equity investments since 2009, according to analysis from early-stage investor Space Capital.
These funds and the technologies they support are also helping pave the way for a Mars economy, though they are not enough on their own.
Unlike Mars, lunar missions benefit from shorter transit times, frequent launch windows and early government-backed programs like NASA’s Artemis.
“Mars missions are constrained by launch opportunities that come only every 26 months, forcing long planning cycles and extended surface stays,” Shaw said.
“This makes the Mars market far less agile and significantly more capital-intensive.”
A longer road to profitability
Those constraints translate into longer timelines for investment returns.
“Missing a single Mars window can delay a mission — and thus any potential income — by over two years,” Shaw said.
“Also, companies can’t iterate quickly or generate frequent revenue like lunar landers that can fly multiple times per year.”
Even optimistic projections from companies such as SpaceX, she said, suggest uncrewed cargo missions in the 2030s, followed by initial crewed flights. Scenarios for mining, manufacturing or tourism services would likely push into the 2040s, with profitability further still.
Space Capital has backed companies with Mars ambitions, including SpaceX and Impulse Space, but most of its portfolio is focused on nearer-term lunar and Earth-orbit applications.
For early-stage investor Seraphim Space, even the moon is too far out on the horizon.
“We’re investing a VC fund that’s a 10-year duration,” Seraphim Space CEO Mark Boggett said. “We need to be confident we can invest, scale and sell the company within that time period.
“With our 3x track record to defend and improve upon, taking bets which are over 10 years is not something we’re focused on.”
The technology gap
Mars needs everything to be more robust than the moon because cargo trips are few and far between, Shaw noted, and Martian infrastructure needs to be more self-sustaining.
Economically viable entry, descent and landing on the planet also remains largely unsolved due to its thin atmosphere and unique gravitational profile.
Even for the moon, Shaw said “affordable” transportation is yet to be truly reached, though Starship may change that within the next decade.
Other Martian technology considerations Shaw cited are:
- Power: Solar energy is less effective on Mars due to its distance from the sun and frequent dust storms. Promising nuclear systems remain unproven at scale.
- Communications and navigation: Mars missions still rely on NASA orbiters. Commercial ventures will require dedicated constellations for data transmission and surface positioning.
- Sustainability: With long supply chains and infrequent launches, Martian infrastructure must be autonomous and resilient.
Legal clarity is another unknown. While the moon is increasingly governed by cooperative norms such as the Artemis Accords, national resource laws and informal “safety zones,” Mars lacks comparable frameworks.
Activity on Mars today remains subject to the ‘no national appropriation’ principle of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, prohibiting nations from claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies.
Still, Shaw pointed to early signals of regulatory intent, including Luxembourg’s 2017 Space Resources Act, which explicitly applies to all celestial bodies and allows companies to own the resources they extract.
As private Mars ventures gain credibility, she expects new frameworks to emerge, likely building on precedents established for the moon.
Searching for demand
As with the moon, one of the fundamental questions is how much demand on Mars could actually be commercial, versus driven by government priorities.
“Right now, almost all potential markets on the moon — outside of tourism — are centered around serving government customers,” BryceTech director of analytics Carie Mullins said.
Communications, power, data relay and imaging infrastructure from the private sector could support future government activity around Mars, Mullins noted, but those ventures will need long-term, committed anchor customers.
“A number of businesses are looking to work on the moon, and while these efforts are building critical capabilities and infrastructure, many are finding it difficult to identify customers or use cases beyond supporting NASA’s Artemis program.”
If NASA were to shift focus more toward Mars, she said that some companies already building lunar systems would likely follow.
That looked more likely before Musk’s high-profile falling out with U.S. President Donald Trump, casting doubt on whether NASA could align its priorities with SpaceX’s Mars ambitions. Proposed NASA budget cuts also threaten many lunar programs.
“There’s been some talk about commercial science missions recently,” Mullins said.
“While it’s still unclear who the main customers would be for those and what kind of value they’d place on the data, the interest reflects a growing recognition that commercial players may contribute meaningfully to scientific discovery.”
According to Shaw: “While the upside of being an early mover in a future Mars economy could be transformative, the path to monetization is vague and likely decades away, with a realistic return on investment not expected until the late 2040s.”
Yet before any of that becomes viable, there’s still the question of whether the business case can close at all.
“We are currently seeing how hard it is to close a business case on the moon,” Mullins said, “given the policy, market and technology hurdles. Those challenges only increase when we start talking about Mars.”
NASA’s $2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, for instance, has highlighted how difficult it is to land on the lunar surface.
Despite those difficulties, valuable lessons are being learned and key technologies are advancing, Mullins added, though even for the moon, “visions of robust non-governmental markets appear optimistic.”
As for Mars, commercial in-orbit technologies such as communications and remote sensing appear to be relatively lower risk and could be on the horizon. NASA found that many of the technologies being developed for the Earth and moon could be leveraged for Mars with “small deltas in designs/costs,” Mullins noted.
But when it comes to human exploration, the timeline is much harder to predict.
“These missions require developing transportation, life support systems, habitats and more, all of which come with high costs,” she said.
Echoing Shaw, Mullins underscored how commercial providers must contend with the long-distance logistics of reaching Mars, compounded by its harsh atmosphere, pervasive dust, extreme temperatures and high radiation levels. “These are not efforts that revenue-driven companies are likely to take on without significant government support,” she added.
“But with sustained public-private collaboration, there’s real potential for industry to play a significant role. If, and when, commercial activities emerge, the foundational infrastructure, developed through public private partnerships, will be there to support it.”
Both analysts agree: Whether Mars becomes a thriving commercial destination or remains a government-led frontier will depend on sustained public-private collaboration, technical breakthroughs and infrastructure that has yet to be built. Even the means of getting there remains far from certain as Starship has yet to prove it can deliver payloads to orbit, let alone reach another world.
This article first appeared in the August 2025 issue of SpaceNews Magazine with the title “Big opportunity, tiny launch window.”