Rutgers astrophysicist Blakesley Burkhart has proposed a financing mechanism called Mission Market to support small space-science missions that receive favorable NASA evaluations but remain unfunded. Submitted to arXiv on October 15, 2026, the Mission Market white paper would connect those mission concepts with companies willing to pay for the creation of new scientific observations. Artificial intelligence companies would provide the principal funding, supplemented by philanthropy and other private participants.
The proposal addresses a specific separation between scientific selection and financial commitment. A mission can offer useful observations without securing enough money to reach launch. Burkhart proposes retaining NASA scientific review as the basis for identifying candidates, then arranging an additional source of financing. The paper is a submission to the Space Ideation Challenge 2026, rather than an announced NASA program or a record of secured corporate investment.
Mission Market would use an advance market commitment, an arrangement in which buyers commit resources before the desired product or service becomes available. For space science, the proposed purchase would finance observations requiring a spacecraft and instruments. The intended effect is to give suppliers a credible customer before they undertake development, instead of requiring them to build a mission and subsequently search for buyers.
A neutral intermediary, proposed as an organization co-chartered with NASA and science foundations, would organize the commitments. Each selected mission would have its full cost committed and held in escrow, meaning funds would be reserved under agreed conditions. Payments would follow verified milestones covering design, integration, launch, and validated data delivery. This arrangement connects financing to observable progress and gives the parties defined occasions to assess whether the work meets their agreement.
Burkhart identifies AI companies as prospective customers because new observations could help develop scientific models. Under the proposed arrangement, a company might support the mission whose measurements best match its research needs, such as an exoplanet survey. The company would choose among scientifically reviewed concepts. Scientific priorities and mission objectives would remain grounded in the review process, rather than being rewritten solely around a purchaser’s preferences.
The suggested commercial return includes early access to observations, collaborative development of benchmarks or models, and computing or engineering partnerships. These are distinct forms of value. Early access depends on timing; model development depends on expertise and usable data; engineering cooperation provides experience with the instruments and processing systems. Their relative value would depend on the mission and the participating company, which makes specific buyer commitments central to evaluating the proposal.
The early-access element would require agreement on the applicable data policy. NASA’s science information policy FAQ states that new mission data generally have no period of exclusive access, although calibration and validation can take up to six months. Existing mission agreements receive separate treatment. A commercial exclusivity period cannot simply be assumed for a NASA partnership. The proposed intermediary would need to establish permissible terms before offering that benefit to funders.
The financing mechanism has a practical comparison in Frontier’s carbon-removal purchasing model. Frontier aggregates buyers’ commitments and evaluates suppliers through technical and commercial review. It uses smaller advance purchases for early suppliers and agreements to buy future deliveries from companies ready to expand. The relevant connection is institutional: an intermediary organizes purchasing demand and evaluates delivery. Carbon removal and space observations produce different outputs, so mission agreements would need their own performance measures and acceptance criteria.
Private financing for space science also has an established history of proposals and experimentation. In reporting on a 2017 conference, Jeff Foust described researchers seeking private support for missions outside government funding. Former NASA astrophysics director Jon Morse, then leading the BoldlyGo Institute, identified raising money as the main obstacle. Foundation representatives described another difficulty: potential donors often assumed NASA already funded the relevant work.
That history helps explain Mission Market’s emphasis on a commercial reason to participate. A donor may support a mission because of its scientific contribution. A corporate buyer needs to identify how the resulting observations support its activities. Burkhart’s proposal brings these motivations into one financing structure, with AI-related demand expected to supply most of the capital. The distinction matters because a funding agreement would need to specify what each participant receives.
The proposal’s division of responsibilities also connects with research on public-private space partnerships, summarized by New Space Economy. That work emphasizes coordination among NASA, universities, and companies, including the alignment of partner strengths and commitments. For Mission Market, those responsibilities would include scientific evaluation, financing, spacecraft delivery, and data management. Assigning them clearly would make the proposed intermediary’s role more concrete than a general appeal for private support.
Burkhart limits the proposed channel to Medium-class Explorers and smaller missions. Larger observatories would remain outside its intended scope. The white paper’s implementation plan begins with establishing the intermediary, obtaining foundation and corporate commitments, and seeking a NASA letter of intent. A pilot phase would aim to fly two or three small missions, each costing roughly less than $60 million, during years one through four. These are proposed milestones measured from implementation, rather than scheduled launches.
The paper identifies measures that would make a pilot assessable: additional missions flown, actual costs relative to mission limits, elapsed time from concept to launch, validated scientific products, and participation by commercial providers. Together, those measures would distinguish money committed from science delivered. A mission reaching orbit would be one milestone; observations made usable for research would be another.
Mission Market’s practical contribution is a proposed structure for matching reviewed scientific opportunities with identifiable buyers and staged financial commitments. Its next step would be to assemble the participating institutions and agree on a candidate mission, delivery requirements, and permissible data benefits. A pilot built around those agreements would test whether corporate demand for scientific observations can support additional flights and publicly available research.
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