Relativity Space

Investment Highlights

Company Overview

Relativity Space is an aerospace manufacturing company headquartered in Long Beach, California. Relativity Space is developing manufacturing technologies, launch vehicles, and rocket engines for commercial orbital launch services. The company is notable for manufacturing most of their Terran 1 and Terran R rocket parts using 3D printing.

Relativity Space was founded in 2015 by CEO Tim Ellis and CTO Jordan Noone on the idea that existing private spaceflight companies were not tapping enough into the potential of additive manufacturing (3D printing). Relativity is aiming to be the first company to successfully launch a fully 3D-printed launch vehicle into orbit

In November 2020, Relativity Space announced its US$500M Series D funding at a calculated US$2.3B valuation. In June 2021 Relativity announced another US$650M funding round led by Fidelity Investments at a valuation of US$4.2B, bringing its total funding to US$1.335B. The funding will help the development of a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Terran R, targeting a first orbital launch no earlier than 2026. Relativity Space has investors including Baillie Gifford, Blackrock, BOND, Coatue, Fidelity, General Catalyst, ICONIQ Capital, K5 Global, Mark Cuban, Playground Global, Social Capital, Tiger Global, Tribe Capital, and Y Combinator among others.

In June 2022, it was reported that Relativity Space would send OneWeb’s second-gen broadband satellites to orbit in 2025. The mission is to be completed using the Terran R, which marked a total value of binding launch deals for that rocket to over $1.2B despite the company having yet to have launched their first rocket.

On March 23, 2023 the company launched its first rocket, but it experienced failure during its second stage of flight and failed to reach orbit. Terran 1 featured no payload. Following the failed launch, Relativity retired the rocket in favor of developing the much larger, reusable Terran R vehicle.

As of June 2020, Relativity Space has pre-sold more launches than any other company in the private space industry since SpaceX.

On 5 April 2019, Relativity Space announced its first signed contract, with Telesat, a Canadian telecom satellite operator. The terms of this contract were not specified, but it did include "multiple" launches of Terran 1.

Relativity Space publicly announced their contract with mu Space in April 2019. It is expected that Relativity Space will launch a mu Space satellite to low Earth orbit in the second half of 2022, aboard Relativity's Terran 1 rocket.

In May 2019, Relativity Space signed a contract with Spaceflight Industries, a satellite rideshare and mission management provider, to launch Spaceflight's dedicated smallsat rideshares. The terms of this deal were not disclosed, however, it was shared that the contract included one launch of Relativity's Terran 1 rocket in the third quarter of 2021, with an option for an unspecified number of additional launches.

In September 2019, Relativity Space and Momentus Space announced their launch service agreement at the 2019 World Satellite Business Week in Paris. The agreement stated that Relativity's Terran 1 launch vehicles will carry Momentus' Vigoride space tug service vehicles into orbit. The contract is for one launch, with an option for five additional missions.

In June 2020, Relativity Space announced that they signed a new launch contract with Iridium. This contract included up to six dedicated launches to deploy ground spare satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) for Iridium NEXT's constellation on Relativity's Terran 1 vehicle. According to Suzi McBride, Iridium's COO, the satellite communication provider chose to partner with Relativity Space because of their flexible launch capability and the company's ability to launch one satellite at a time.[42] According to the deal these launches will not begin earlier than 2023.

Lockheed Martin announced on 16 October 2020, that it will launch a cryogenic liquid hydrogen management demonstration mission on Terran 1. Lockheed Martin also specified that the launch will make use of Momentus' Vigoride orbital transfer vehicle to house the cryogenic payload. This announcement came two days after NASA announced the recipients of its Tipping Point awards.

OneWeb announced on 30 June 2022 that it signed the first contract for Terran R launches, with a value of over $1.2B for more than 20 launches starting in 2025.

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