NASA picked Eric Schmidt’s Relativity Space to fly to Mars. It has never reached orbit.

NASA is partnering with Relativity Space, the rocket company run by former Google chief Eric Schmidt, to fly a science mission to Mars.

Announced on June 17, the mission is called Aeolus, the first flight in Relativity’s new Interplanetary Sciences Program. The company will build the spacecraft, provide its Terran R rocket, and fly the science payloads to the Red Planet, with a target launch in 2028.

The deal follows a now-familiar template. The public agency supplies the science and a private company supplies low-cost infrastructure, the same arrangement NASA used to have SpaceX fly cargo to the space station and Firefly land on the Moon.

The science itself is genuinely useful. Aeolus carries an atmospheric instrument suite built by NASA’s Ames centre, plus a radar sounder to map shallow subsurface ice and geology. NASA expects the first daily, global view of Martian winds, temperatures, dust and clouds, data meant to make future landings, crewed or not, safer.

A bet on a company that has never made orbit

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The catch is who NASA is betting on. Relativity has never reached orbit.

The company was founded in 2015 by two former SpaceX and Blue Origin engineers around the idea of 3D-printing rockets. Its first vehicle, Terran-1, failed mid-flight in 2023. It pivoted to a bigger rocket, the Terran R, then ran low on money.

That is when Schmidt stepped in, taking a majority stake in 2025 and installing himself as chief executive. The Terran R has not yet flown, and Relativity has not disclosed the spacecraft details for Aeolus. Neither side has put a price on the mission.

NASA is candid that this carries risk, as commercial partnerships do. Some of the agency’s startup partners have gone bankrupt; others have put landers on the Moon at an angle. “By pairing NASA’s world-class instruments with commercial innovation and investment, we can deliver more science, more often,” administrator Jared Isaacman said.

The part that’s really about data centres

Here is the detail that explains why Schmidt is interested. The 2028 mission will not only study Mars. It will fly what Relativity calls a “Relay Data Center”: server-class computing and mass storage in Mars orbit, able to run AI models on board and beam large data volumes back to Earth over optical and radio links.

That is Schmidt’s stated ambition made literal. He took over Relativity saying he wanted to put data centres in orbit, and the company’s first interplanetary mission is, in part, a data centre in orbit.

The mission also has an unusual backer. Relativity describes Aeolus as flying “for a philanthropic customer,” with NASA as a partner building the atmospheric instruments. It has not named the customer. Given that Schmidt owns the rocket company and funds science through his own philanthropy, that is an arrangement worth watching.

To its credit, Relativity says all of the mission’s scientific data, algorithms and automation learnings will be released to the world.

And a chance to beat Musk

It also sets up a neat rivalry. Schmidt and Elon Musk, who has spent years promising to colonise Mars, are regular sparring partners over AI safety. For all his talk, Musk’s SpaceX has never actually sent its own mission to the Red Planet.

So if Relativity launches Aeolus on schedule, a big if, it could be the first private mission to reach Mars, and Schmidt, not Musk, would get there first. That is a lot of conditions stacked on a rocket that still has to prove it can leave the ground.