NASA selects Eric Schmidt's rocket company for a 2028 mission to Mars

Relativity Space, the rocket company led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, has been selected to launch NASA's Aeolus payload to Mars in 2028, as reported earlier by TechCrunch. Under a new public-private partnership, Relativity Space will provide the spacecraft, rocket, and cruise operations to fly Aeolus to Mars, where the payload will provide the first integrated, daily, global view of Martian winds, temperatures, dust, and clouds.

The Aeolus payload will carry four instruments for studying the Martian atmosphere, which NASA says will directly inform entry, descent, and landing systems and support safer, more predictable mission planning for astronauts.

Schmidt, who served as CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, became Relativity Space's CEO in 2025, a couple of years after the company launched the world's first 3D-printed rocket, Terran 1, which failed shortly after launch. Relativity Space's larger Terran R rocket is not scheduled for its first launch until later this year.