Mars exploration has always been the exclusive purview of national space agencies, but NASA is trying to change that, awarding a dozen research tasks to private companies as a prelude to commercial support for future missions to the Red Planet. It's the second time in a month that the agency has shown its desire for commercial support in Mars missions, having more or less scrapped the original Mars Sample Return mission in favor of a to-be-determined alternative, likely by private space companies. A total of nine companies were selected to perform 12 "concept studies" on how they could provide Mars-related services, from payload delivery to planetary imaging to communications relays.