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...
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