Interesting there's no mention of Starlink. I would expect SpaceX to bid on any such contract. SpaceX have the tech to do this today with Falcon Heavy and Star

Interesting there's no mention of Starlink. I would expect SpaceX to bid on any such contract. SpaceX have the tech to do this today with Falcon Heavy and Starlink satellites. I would assume for much cheaper than whatever JPL is going to whip up. And once Starship is deploying Starlink satellites for Earth in the next ~12-24 months then it becomes pretty close to zero effort for them to deploy a small lunar constellation. They'll be doing a Starship launch every week and one or two of those could carry up an entire lunar constellation I'd guess. I also suspect out of pride Elon Musk will want to have a constellation on all of: Earth, Moon, and Mars, with laser links in between.