“Instead of spending $550 million on a mission into deep space, NASA set a goal to spend just one-tenth of that and gave each SIMPLEx mission a $55 million price cap, excluding launch.”
MRO and MAVEN each cost NASA over half a billion dollars. ESCAPADE gets a $55 million cap, and the cap excludes launch. Rocket Lab won’t say how much of the $55 million it got. The cheap mission rides on the first launch of New Glenn.