How much does it cost to send one satellite to orbit Mars?
It costs several 100 thousand dollars to develop each separate instrument on the satellite, a about the same to develop the satellite itself. Overall it takes several 10’s of millions to build the entire spacecraft. Launching on a Delta rocket costs ~65 million dollars. And then you have to pay the salaries of all the people who will run the spacecraft and instruments over the course of the mission. A complete satellite mission is about 200 million dollars total. For comparison, a single shuttle launch (not including the cost of the space shuttle itself) is about 1 billion dollars.
