Elon Musk tweeted a photo of the moon and called it Mars - and this isn't the first time

Aaron Holmes

Mar 11, 2020, 22:06 IST

Elon Musk tweeted a photo of the moon and called it Mars - and this isn't the first time

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Elon Musk tweeted a picture on Wednesday of the moon with the text "Occupy Mars," an apparent callback to the last time he mixed up two the celestial bodies in June.
It seems likely that Musk was trolling his fans with the post, since he's previously acknowledged that the graphic features a picture of the moon.
Astronomer and pundit Neil deGrasse Tyson replied to the tweet, saying "I'm all in."
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Nine months ago, Elon Musk tweeted a picture of the moon with the text "Occupy Mars," and tweets pointing out the error racked up tens of thousands of likes.

This morning, the billionaire and prolific Twitter troll tweeted the same graphic again.

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It seems likely that Musk, whose company SpaceX is developing a rocket to go to Mars, is aware that the graphic is inaccurate. SpaceX has been selling T-shirts since 2014 that bear the same graphic but with an actual picture of Mars.

When he first tweeted the graphic in June, Musk was quickly called out by the internet. He responded at the time with laughing face emojis, adding, "moon too."

Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson played along with Musk's tweet on Wednesday, replying that he's "all in" with a photo of himself wearing a SpaceX shirt.

Musk has stood by his yearslong objective to develop a rocket that will put humans on Mars. But the billionaire worried aloud earlier this week that, if the speed of innovation doesn't pick up, he's "definitely going to be dead" before that mission is accomplished.