NASA chose a company that's never reached orbit to run its next Mars mission — then hired 26 people to do it.

From Cash Crisis to NASA's Mars Orbiter of Record

In June 2026, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman stood at Relativity Space's headquarters and announced the agency had picked the company to deliver a science orbiter to Mars in 2028. NASA will supply the Aeolus instrument suite (a Doppler wind and temperature sensor, thermal limb sounder, surface radiometric sensors, and wide-field camera built at Ames Research Center). Relativity will supply everything else: the spacecraft bus, the Terran R launch vehicle, cruise operations, and the funding. An undisclosed philanthropic backer is paying for the mission. The structure is a no-funds-exchanged Space Act Agreement, meaning NASA has no direct procurement leverage over the schedule and the company bears the technical risk of reaching another planet.

Eighteen months earlier, this outcome looked unlikely. Relativity had burned through more than $1 billion in funding without reaching orbit. Its Terran 1 rocket flew once in 2023, failed to insert its payload, and was shelved. The company was running out of cash. In March 2025, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt stepped in with a reported $800 million investment that gave him a controlling stake and the CEO role. Bloomberg reported the company had been on the brink of bankruptcy. Schmidt brought capital and a network of science philanthropists. Schmidt Sciences, the foundation he runs with his wife Wendy, was already developing the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Observatory System, including Lazuli, a space telescope with a primary mirror larger than Hubble's that Relativity plans to launch on Terran R as soon as 2028.

The Mars orbiter is the first mission under Relativity's Interplanetary Sciences Program, a commercial lane for planetary science Schmidt has framed as the logical extension of Terran R's reusability. The spacecraft will also carry a radar instrument to map subsurface ice and geology, serve as a communications relay for surface assets, and run what the company calls server-class compute and massive data storage for AI workloads in Mars orbit — ambitions that suggest a power budget well beyond a standard cubesat bus.

The timeline is tight. Terran R has not yet flown; Relativity's original target for a first launch from Cape Canaveral was late 2026, and industry sources now expect it to slip to 2027. Mars launch windows open roughly every 26 months, and missing the 2028 window means waiting until 2030. The company has to demonstrate orbital flight, integrate the spacecraft with NASA's payload, and certify for an interplanetary trajectory in roughly two years.

NASA's call is notable because of who it bypassed. The agency selected a company that has never placed a payload in orbit over established primes like Lockheed Martin, which built MAVEN and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Relativity's repositioning from pure launch provider to integrated mission delivery (spacecraft, manufacturing, launch, and operations under one roof) is what made the partnership structurally possible. NASA needed a company willing to own the full interplanetary mission as a commercial product, not just supply a rocket for a government-built orbiter.

The Mars deal also gives Schmidt a defining achievement beyond launch-vehicle manufacturing at a moment when his tenure needs one. And it puts Relativity in the unusual position of competing for deep-space talent while still proving its launch vehicle works. Zero G Talent's board lists 26 open Relativity roles added in the past week, including launch operations engineers in Cape Canaveral and structures technicians in Long Beach — the hiring pattern of a company building toward a first flight while simultaneously staffing a planetary mission. Whether that hiring pace continues depends on what Terran R does when it finally leaves the pad.

Why 3D-Printed Rockets Change the Talent Equation

A rocket that used to demand 100,000 parts and two or more years to build now ships with 100 times fewer parts and a production cycle under 60 days. That math, which Relativity Space has repeated since its earliest hardware runs, is not just a manufacturing story. It is a workforce story, because the people who can deliver on that compression look nothing like the ones legacy aerospace has spent decades hiring.

Traditional rocket manufacturing locks a design years in advance. Casts, molds, dies, and welded subassemblies each require tooling that takes months to fabricate and thousands of dollars to rework. Engineers working inside that cadence learn to optimize for what the factory can build today, not for what the mission needs tomorrow. Relativity's Stargate platform inverts that relationship. Scott Van Vliet, the company's former senior vice president of software engineering, avionics, and additive manufacturing, described the shift to NASA: instead of rebuilding an assembly line to make a change, "we can just make changes in CAD, print the part, treat it, and send it back to the test stand."

That single change rewrites the job description. A structures engineer at a legacy launch provider spends much of her time designing around the limits of machining and welding (thick joints, conservative geometries, long-lead forgings). At Relativity, she works against the logic of a robotic wire-arc printer that deposits aluminum alloy layer by layer, building tank domes and barrel sections in a single continuous run. The Terran 1 first stage that flew in March 2023 was 85 percent 3D-printed by mass, according to NASA's Spinoff publication. The body came off a Stargate printer using wire arc additive manufacturing; the nine Aeon 1 engines were built with powder bed fusion, a process Relativity developed in close collaboration with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

That collaboration matters for the talent pool. Paul Gradl, principal engineer of component development at Marshall, told NASA that 3D-printed engine parts cut lead times by a factor of two to ten. Relativity's engineers meet weekly with Gradl's team to review progress and share data on materials and design. The company also uses a copper-chromium-niobium alloy called GRCop-42, invented at NASA, that handles the temperature swing from cryogenic propellants to 6,000°F combustion. Engineers who can work with that alloy, and who understand how to design for additive processes rather than subtractive ones, are scarce. The aerospace and defense sector faces a projected shortfall of roughly 120,000 skilled workers by 2025, according to a Talenbrium analysis, and the gap widens when the skill set includes both metallurgy and software-driven manufacturing.

The Stargate 4th Generation printers that Relativity unveiled in October 2022 push the talent shift further. The machines print horizontally, removing the ceiling-height constraints of vertical printers and opening a build volume 55 times larger than the previous generation (up to 120 feet long and 24 feet wide). Print speed improved seven to twelve times over earlier generations. Each printer is forecast to produce four Terran R rockets per year at full rate. Tim Ellis, Relativity's co-founder and CEO, framed the compounding effect: "The lighter a product is, the better it performs, and when 3D printing that product, it's also faster and more cost-effective to produce with each successive improvement."

Lighter hardware means fewer parts, fewer welds, fewer inspections, and fewer hands on the factory floor during integration. It also means the engineers who remain must be fluent in the stack that replaces those steps: computer vision for in-process monitoring, machine learning for print-parameter optimization, and the proprietary deposition technology Relativity developed in-house. The company's Long Beach headquarters, a former Boeing C-17 plant it calls The Wormhole, houses more than a dozen Stargate printers and is still only 33 percent operational. A second facility, The Portal, produces Aeon R engines. Both sites are hiring. Zero G Talent's board currently lists 26 open Relativity roles, including structures technicians, launch operations engineers, and CAD administrators — positions that sit at the intersection of additive hardware and software-driven production.

The deep-space angle sharpens the workforce implications. Terran R is designed to fly 20,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit, and Relativity has already sold a commercial Mars mission to Impulse Space alongside multi-launch deals with OneWeb. Those contracts require manufacturing that can scale without the fixed-tooling model that constrains legacy providers. They also require engineers who can iterate on flight hardware in weeks, not years, because deep-space missions punish mass and schedule overruns with compounding consequences. When NASA's Paul Gradl talks about freeing agency resources for Moon and Mars missions by buying cheaper commercial launch, the mechanism that makes those launches cheaper is additive manufacturing — and the workforce that makes additive manufacturing work is the bottleneck that determines whether the model scales.

That is why the talent equation has changed. A company that prints rockets does not need fewer engineers; it needs different ones. The ones who can write the software that drives a Stargate printer, read the telemetry from an in-process sensor suite, and redesign a thrust chamber overnight are the people who will staff the next era of interplanetary flight. And right now, the pool of engineers who can do all three is small enough that every new Stargate printer Relativity brings online is also a new requisition for someone who did not exist on a legacy aerospace org chart five years ago.

NASA's Deep-Space Workforce Signal

NASA's decision to hand a Mars orbiter contract to Relativity Space (a company whose rockets have not yet reached orbit) does more than validate one startup's engineering. It reshapes the talent market for the entire deep-space sector.

The Aeolus mission, targeting a 2028 launch, requires Relativity to staff spacecraft development, cruise operations, and a science-operations phase that NASA will support for at least one Martian year. That is roughly 1.88 Earth years of sustained engineering work on a single interplanetary program — the kind of long-duration mission assignment that has historically been the preserve of NASA centers or the prime contractors that supply them. Relativity now competes directly with SpaceX and Blue Origin for the engineers and mission operators who want that exact line on their résumés.

The numbers tell part of the story. Zero G Talent's board shows Blue Origin added 147 roles in the past week, spanning orbit determination, autonomous navigation, and motion-control test engineering. SpaceX added 97, including site-reliability and Starlink positions. Relativity added 26 — a smaller absolute count, but significant for a company that was restructuring under new leadership twelve months ago. Those roles include launch operations, structures technicians, and CAD administrators, the backbone of a hardware team scaling toward a deep-space delivery schedule.

The competition is not just about headcount. Blue Origin is publicly pitching its Blue Ring platform as ready to support a Mars telecommunications orbiter in the same 2028 window. China's Tianwen-3 sample-return mission targets the same launch period. Three separate programs, one narrow Mars launch window, and a finite pool of engineers who know how to run interplanetary cruise operations. The Aeolus contract gives Relativity a seat at that table — and a reason for mission operators to choose a 3D-printing rocket shop over the established alternatives.

For the engineers watching this, the signal is concrete: deep-space mission experience is no longer gated by legacy aerospace. The next Mars orbiter will run on a company's first interplanetary program. That is where the operational knowledge gets built — and where careers in interplanetary exploration get their start.

What the Schmidt Bet Tells Frontier-Tech Operators

Eric Schmidt taking a controlling stake in Relativity Space in March 2025 was not a routine aerospace investment. It was his first CEO job since leaving Google in 2011. He replaced co-founder Tim Ellis, told employees he had made a significant investment, and took control of a 9-year-old rocket company that Bloomberg reported was facing cash drain and struggling to raise funding in 2024. Schmidt's family office, Hillspire, had already invested in over 22 AI firms since 2019. But Relativity was different — he didn't just write a check. He took the controls.

The signal to operators is specific: the most interesting aerospace bets right now sit at the intersection of scaled infrastructure and physical access to orbit. Schmidt spent a decade building Google's data centers, cloud systems, and global network. His Relativity move positions him to own the launch layer for a future where constellations (for communications, Earth observation, and possibly orbital compute) need repeatable, high-cadence access to space. Google's Project Suncatcher, which Reuters reported in May 2026 was in discussions with SpaceX about orbital data center launches, gives the thesis a concrete anchor. Schmidt's background makes the connection obvious: he ran the company now studying space-based AI infrastructure.

The operator-investor pattern

Schmidt is not the only billionaire operator betting on aerospace infrastructure, but his move reveals a distinct pattern that differs from pure venture capital or patient-capital models.

Schmidt's model sits between Bezos and Musk. He lacks SpaceX's internal satellite demand and Blue Origin's decade-plus of funded development time. What he brings is Washington connectivity — Schmidt chaired the Defense Innovation Advisory Board and co-chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence — and a network that speaks the language of cloud executives, AI labs, and data infrastructure financiers, not just satellite manufacturers.

What this means for career bets

For engineers and operators weighing where to plant, the Schmidt rescue narrows the question. Relativity had 26 open roles on Zero G Talent's board in the past week — positions like Launch Operations Engineer II at Cape Canaveral ($104,000–$143,000) and Sr. CAD Administrator in Long Beach ($122,000–$167,000). That headcount is modest next to SpaceX's 97 roles or Blue Origin's 147 in the same window. But the composition matters: Relativity is hiring for launch operations, infrastructure engineering, and security management — the roles you staff when you are preparing to operate a pad and fly a vehicle, not just design one.

The career calculus has three parts:

• Runway. Schmidt's estimated $64.3 billion net worth means Relativity will not die from a cash crunch before Terran R flies. That stability attracts talent who watched Astra, Virgin Orbit, and other small-launch companies collapse after funding dried up.
• Technical risk. Terran R has not reached orbit. A launch company with an unflown vehicle is still a high-variance bet. Engineers who join now are signing up for the hard interval between first launch and routine service — the period where redesigns, failure reviews, and factory changes consume cash before steady revenue arrives.
• Optionality. Schmidt's constellation thesis gives Relativity employees a plausible upside story that extends beyond selling launch slots. If orbital compute or large-scale scientific constellations materialize as real procurement categories, the company sits under an owner who understands those customers. That optionality is speculative but not fictional — Google and Planet are flying prototype satellites for Project Suncatcher by early 2027.

The real differentiator is the network

A traditional launch company talks to satellite manufacturers, insurers, and government mission managers. Schmidt can open doors to cloud computing executives, AI infrastructure planners, and defense and security decision-makers who think in terms of resilient space architecture. The Defense Innovation Advisory Board connection and his years shaping Biden-era AI policy give Relativity access to conversations that other launch startups cannot enter.

That network effect compounds if Terran R reaches orbit. A working medium-to-heavy-lift rocket under Schmidt's control becomes a credible second option for government and commercial buyers who want launch diversity. The U.S. defense establishment values multiple launch providers for national security payloads. Schmidt's Washington relationships are not a substitute for flight heritage, but they accelerate the trust-building process once the hardware proves itself.

When the bet goes wrong

Schmidt's capital buys time. It does not skip flight qualification. If Terran R misses its late-2026 first-launch target, or if early flights expose deep problems with the Aeon R engine cluster, reusability economics, or factory throughput, the constellation thesis collapses back into a rescue-financing story. Employees who joined for the infrastructure upside will find themselves at a rocket company that still needs to prove it can deliver payloads to orbit — a problem that no amount of Washington access or AI-network connections can solve.

The honest read: Relativity under Schmidt is a high-ceiling, narrow-path bet. The ceiling is defined by orbital infrastructure demand that may take a decade to mature. The path is defined by Terran R's first flight, second flight, and third flight — the sequence that turns a vehicle architecture into a transportation service. Join for the runway and the network. Stay only if the hardware flies.

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