NASA picks Eric Schmidt’s rocket company for Mars mission, setting up a race with SpaceX

Relativity Space—a rocket maker acquired by former Google executive chair Eric Schmidt last year after stumbling on the path to orbit—might just beat SpaceX to Mars.

On Tuesday, NASA said it hired the company to build a spacecraft to house a suite of scientific instruments, launch it into space, and fly it to Mars.

The structure of the contract is akin to the deals that NASA made with SpaceX to fly cargo to the International Space Station, or Firefly Aerospace to put a lander on the Moon. The government agency handles the science, while the private company provides low-cost infrastructure.

Aeolus, as the mission is dubbed, will contain four instruments to measure and image Mars from orbit, providing what NASA expects to be the first daily, global view of dust, winds, and temperature in its atmosphere. The agency said that data will make it safer for landers and, someday, astronauts, to visit the surface of the Red Planet.

“By pairing NASA’s world‑class instruments with commercial innovation and investment, we can deliver more science, more often, and reduce the time it takes to get essential data into the hands of researchers preparing for future human missions to Mars,” NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in statement.

The mission is set to launch in 2028—a rapid pace that will require Relativity to design and build the spacecraft to carry the Aeolus instruments, and finish building the rocket that will carry it to space, all on a tight timeline. NASA did not disclose how much it is paying Relativity for the mission, and Relativity did not respond to questions from TechCrunch.

Isaacman, who has flown to space twice on private SpaceX missions, has championed public-private partnerships like this. Under this model, the company working with NASA takes on some of the development cost of the project, in exchange for allowing NASA to stretch its budget further—a structure that has become a template for how the agency funds ambitious missions without bearing all the financial risk itself.

But NASA is taking on risk as well: Relativity is unproven, and there’s no guarantee the mission will even make it off the ground. Past startup partners of NASA have gone bankrupt or seen Moon landers arrive askew. The potential payoff for the company is meant to extend beyond the NASA contract itself, including commercial applications, like launching satellites or delivering cargo to the Moon. Still, the further out into space these partnerships reach, the murkier the market becomes for commercial services.

Relativity was founded in 2015 by two former SpaceX and Blue Origin engineers, with the idea of using 3D printing to its maximum potential as a path to building a cheaper rocket. The company’s first design, Terran-1, launched in March 2023 and failed mid-flight. Relativity doubled down by moving on to a larger design, dubbed the Terran R.

Before Relativity could get it to the launch pad, the company ran into fundraising challenges, and Schmidt took a majority stake in the company in it last year, installing himself as CEO. He’s been tight-lipped about the investment but has expressed interest in orbital data centers, and is thought to be using Relativity to launch a space telescope, Lazuili, financed by his family philanthropy, Schmidt Sciences.

The former tech executive’s decision to take over a space company last year puzzled some observers because rocketry is a crowded and capital-intensive field. But pent up demand for new rockets—fueled by delays at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin—could still lead to a payoff for Schmidt if Terran R can actually make it to space.

And the new contract might give Schmidt a chance to put one over on Elon Musk, a regular sparring partner of his on the issue of AI safety. While Musk has long talked of his Martian ambitions, SpaceX has never actually sent its own mission to Mars (no, the Tesla he launched into space in 2018 missed).

If Relativity’s Aeolus launches on schedule, it could be the first private mission to reach the Red Planet.