Relativity Space makes significant progress on Terran R; flight hardware in production

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Relativity Space has announced significant progress with their Terran R reusable launch vehicle. In a newly released video, the company says they are set to have the vehicle’s primary structure completed this year, with a full vehicle assembled for launch in 2026.

Terran R is also anticipating reuse early in the program, with the first launch targeting a soft splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean of the first stage, followed by a landing on a floating barge on later flights. This all comes with an eventual goal of achieving 50 to 100 flights annually.

This progress comes as the company encounters a change in leadership. Relativity co-founder Tim Ellis announced he will now serve as a board member as Eric Schmidt becomes the company’s new CEO. In a statement on X, Ellis says Schmidt will also provide substantial financial backing.

The Terran R vehicle, which has only been under active development for the last year and a half, is currently undergoing critical design reviews.

“[That] doesn’t mean the whole vehicle is designed, but we’re about 50 percent of the way through critical design reviews,” Relativity Space CTO Kevin Wu said. “It’s actually the vast majority of the committed mass of the vehicle. The remaining work that we have is mostly secondary structures and commercial off-the-shelf.”

As of February 2025, more than 160 critical design reviews have been completed and over 50% of the vehicle’s mass has been released. That includes all 13 of the first stage Aeon R engines, six flight domes actively undergoing drilling and operations, and all second stage barrels that have moved into tank assembly.

Terran R is a shift from the company’s first rocket, Terran 1. That vehicle was 85% built using wire arc additive design, which is very similar to 3D printing but with metallic alloys. While Terran 1 did not make it to orbit, Relativity Space notes it succeeded in reaching space — proving several of Relativity’s unique manufacturing processes. Terran R is a mixture of additive design and spot-welding.

Terran-1 launches on its first flight in 2023. (Credit: Relativity Space)

“We’re not dogmatic about how anything should be made or the history of the company or anything like that,” Wu said. “We’re just dogmatic about fielding a great product. Our manufacturing methods are a trade like anything else on the vehicle, and it’s really important to understand the pros, cons, and risks of every trade.”

This included the decision to outsource certain parts of the process that previously would have been done in-house.

“So when we look at a manufacturing method that could be as impactful as how we’re making the barrels or the domes or the fairings, it really comes down to a balanced approach between engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, and the global business.”

“Smart decision-making is optimizing for the entire business, not just focusing energy in one particular area that we may optimize locally.”

An external company has partnered with Relativity Space to provide the domes after attempting to print their own in-house. As a result, the domes for Terran-R are more traditional aluminum lithium alloy domes, like those Wu had seen while working at SpaceX developing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

Completed dome sections for Terran R inside the company’s Long Beach, California, facility. (Credit: Relativity Space)

In fact, Senior Vice President of Manufacturing and Supply Chain Zack Rubin pointed out that switching to manufactured parts as opposed to printed parts does not mean that additive manufacturing is going away.

“We have gotten farther in 3D printing because we invested in those domes and we’re using that 3D printing technology elsewhere,” Rubin said. “We’re still using additive manufacturing on Terran R in areas where it really helps us. Things we’re looking at are areas that help us get to the market faster and develop, build, and test faster.”

A similar decision was made to outsource the manufacturing of the payload fairing, as Relativity found that it was more beneficial to not focus all of their factory efforts on that design, especially given the company’s goal to launch quickly and reliably. The company is also bringing in pre-manufactured composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPV).

The move to pre-manufactured parts doesn’t mean all of Terran R’s infrastructure is being outsourced. Many parts are being built and designed in Relativity’s Long Beach, California, headquarters.

“We will see the entire factory, every single work center, become alive,” Rubin said. “We will see hardware flow from one work center to the other. We’ll lean on our digital systems, our enterprise systems. This is truly the first year we’re going to have a fully functioning factory for Terran R.”

One of Terran R’s key manufactured parts is its engines. The first stage of Terran R uses 13 Aeon R engines, with a singular vacuum-optimized Aeon R engine for the second stage. Both engines utilize heritage engineering from Terran 1, which used Aeon 1 engines.

“It’s the same cycle, a gas generator, and uses the same propellants, liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquified natural gas (LNG),” Vice President of Propulsion James Harris said. “Aeon R is a much larger engine with much higher thrust, and also requires us to have throttle and mixture ratio control in order to meet the mission of the Terran R vehicle.”

Aeon R can produce around 270,000 pounds of thrust (lbf) at sea level. The single vacuum-optimized variant on the second stage can produce 323,000 lbf. The vehicle’s propellants are densified, meaning they are chilled to increase the amount of propellants stored in same-sized tanks.

With high-pressure nitrogen supplementing, the engine uses gaseous hydrogen and oxygen to jumpstart the gas generator ignition. Of the first stage engines, nine of the 13 will be gimballed.

As with all development processes, Aeon R has been through different iterations. The third iteration is currently being used for flight testing, with the fourth iteration expected to fly on the first flight. This is where Relativity’s additive manufacturing plays a vital role in vehicle development progress.

“By leveraging additive [manufacturing], we’re able to quickly make changes to key components like the combustion chamber, the injector, and the pump, learn from tests, and deploy a new design — rinse and repeat,” Harris said.

The engines are tested at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi. The design philosophy of Relativity Space is to expect failures along the way, but only in the right settings.

“There’s an industry term called ‘test like you fly,’ which I’ve always thought is a little backwards,” Vice President of Test and Launch Clay Walker said. “It actually should be you fly like you test it. When you test the rocket, you’re bounding what you know the rocket is capable of doing reliably. I know the rocket will light at this temperature, I know the rocket will fly at this pressure. I’m confident the systems work there.”

“Then you should baseline what you think the flight profile will stress the rocket to and then test to a larger window than that to ensure that you’re not doing anything for the first time when you release the rocket for flight.”

However, the first Terran R flight vehicle is planning to test various reusability aspects for the first time. Four landing legs are located inside the engine fairings of the four fixed Aeon R engines, with a sliding track for the upper strut. Terran R’s first flight will launch from Launch Complex 16 (LC-16) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and end with a soft splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. Relativity’s ultimate goal is to land the first stage on a barge, similar to the droneships SpaceX employs for its Falcon booster landings.

Also similar to Falcon, Terran R will go through different variations over the years, known as “blocks.”

“I think coming out of the block one campaign, we’ll want to have recovered and fully inspected and potentially retested a first stage that we’ve recovered,” Vice President of Integrated Performance Ryan Kraft said. “We’re really not leaning on true reusability for the first block of the vehicle. The first block of the vehicle, I really view as more of an engineering steppingstone to get to the full reusability of the first stage.”

Block two will focus more on reusability than entry, descent, and landing. Block three is expected to ramp up Terran R’s launch cadence to 50 to 100 launches per year.

Work continues on pad modifications for Terran R at LC-16. (Credit: Relativity Space)

Relativity’s focus on launching satellite constellations is responsible for this high launch cadence. Their primary customer is a company planning to launch thousands of satellites, each of which will mass anywhere from 500 kg to 1.5 tonnes.

“Terran-R has been designed to carry 20,000 kg to low-Earth orbit,” Chief Revenue Officer Josh Brost said. “That’s really what we’ve identified as the sweet spot within the constellation market. It’s large enough to provide great economics on a dollar-per-satellite basis but small enough to ensure that we’re able to fill it full with each launch.”

Thus far, Relativity Space has created a $2.9 billion backlog that’s been signed.

“What we’re seeing today is demand that is growing faster than any one supplier can possibly serve,” Brost said. “In addition, we’re also hearing from customers a very strong desire to ensure that they have multiple options to get to space.”

(Lead image: Artist’s impression of the Terran R launching from LC-16. Credit: Relativity Space)

The post Relativity Space makes significant progress on Terran R; flight hardware in production appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.



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