NASA is reusing its ISS cargo playbook of public science paired with a private rocket company, and the 2028 partner is Relativity Space, an unproven launcher now controlled by former Google chair Eric Schmidt.
NASA has hired a small rocket company, Relativity Space, to build and fly a Mars atmosphere mission the agency has named Aeolus, a deal the agency announced on Tuesday as part of the same public-private template it has used on SpaceX cargo flights to the International Space Station and on Firefly's lunar lander (TechCrunch). Under that template, NASA owns the science and supplies instruments, while the private partner supplies the rocket and the spacecraft bus and shoulders a share of the development cost.
The mission is built around four instruments that NASA describes as the first daily, global view of dust, winds, and temperature in the Martian atmosphere, a payload aimed squarely at researchers planning eventual crewed missions, who need a continuous weather record rather than the snapshots they get today. Aeolus is targeted to launch in 2028, which is a tight schedule for any Mars mission and an unusually tight one for a company that has to design and build a planetary spacecraft bus at the same time it finishes the rocket meant to carry it. Relativity has not yet reached the launch pad with its heavy lifter, the Terran R.
The template NASA is using is the real story, not a marketing race. SpaceX already ferries cargo to the ISS under a fixed-price commercial contract and Firefly is preparing a commercial lunar lander for NASA, both arrangements that traded some of the agency's traditional cost-plus control for lower price tags and shared risk. Aeolus would extend that model from low Earth orbit and the Moon to interplanetary space, the first time NASA has asked a commercial partner to deliver a science orbiter to another planet on a cost-shared basis. If Aeolus launches on schedule, it would be the first privately built mission to reach Mars; SpaceX has not yet sent an own spacecraft to the Red Planet.
Administrator Jared Isaacman, who has flown to space twice on private SpaceX missions, framed the selection as pairing NASA instruments with commercial innovation, a pitch that fits his own biography. The contract value was not disclosed, and Relativity did not respond to TechCrunch's questions at the time of reporting, so any cost or capex claim is premature until NASA or Relativity publish terms.
The risk read is real. Relativity was founded in 2015 by two former SpaceX and Blue Origin engineers around a 3D-printed rocket concept, and the smaller Terran-1 flew once, in March 2023, and failed mid-flight, which is the record the company is now working to move past. The company's larger Terran R, the rocket earmarked for Aeolus, has not yet reached the launch pad. Hitting a 2028 Mars launch window requires finishing a rocket and an interplanetary bus at the same time, a concurrency that prior startup partners in NASA's commercial portfolio have struggled with; some have gone bankrupt, and lunar landers have come in askew. Schedule language should be read as conditional, not guaranteed.
Governance is the other beat worth a sentence. Eric Schmidt, the former Google executive chair, took a majority stake in Relativity last year and installed himself as CEO after the company struggled to raise money in a tough launch market. Schmidt is reported, in TechCrunch's reporting rather than on the record from Schmidt, to be using Relativity to launch a separate space telescope called Lazuili, financed through his Schmidt Sciences family philanthropy, which puts the Mars orbiter inside a broader push to make Relativity the launcher of choice for Schmidt-backed science. Whether that alignment helps or complicates Aeolus depends on how cleanly NASA and Schmidt's philanthropic side can be kept on the same page.
The wider context is a launch market with pent-up demand and not enough heavy lift. Blue Origin has slipped its own schedule, and a working Terran R would give NASA and commercial customers another heavy option, which is part of why the agency is willing to bet on a company that has not yet orbited a customer payload.
The watch items are concrete. First, when Relativity posts Terran R's first orbital attempt, because until that milestone the 2028 window is more slogan than schedule. Second, when NASA publishes the contract value, because the public-private template is only as durable as its price tag. Third, whether any other private Mars mission slips in first, which would change the framing of Aeolus from first to one of the first. The most useful fact for a reader right now is the simplest one: NASA has picked a 3D-printing rocket company with no interplanetary track record to build the first daily global weather station at Mars, and the 2028 clock is already running.