In the contested arena of deep-space commerce, Rocket Lab has formally challenged NASA's decision to award Blue Origin a contract worth up to $700 million to build a Mars telecommunications orbiter — a relay station that would one day carry humanity's messages to and from the red planet. The protest is a mirror held up to 2021, when Blue Origin itself challenged NASA's lunar-lander award to SpaceX, reminding us that in the new space age, the rules of competition are written not only in rocket exhaust but in legal filings. What unfolds at the Government Accountability Office will say as much ab