June 19, 2026
Mars bar fight begins
NASA picks Eric Schmidt's rocket company for Mars mission
Schmidt’s rocket bet just got a Mars ticket — and commenters are already fighting about whether it counts
TLDR: NASA chose Eric Schmidt’s Relativity Space for a Mars weather mission planned for 2028, a big win for a rocket company that still has a lot to prove. Commenters are split between hype over beating SpaceX headlines, skepticism that it really counts, and worry about trusting private companies with risky space missions.
NASA has picked Relativity Space — the rocket company now run by former Google boss Eric Schmidt — to build and launch Aeolus, a mission meant to orbit Mars and give scientists a daily planet-wide look at dust, wind, and temperature. In plain English: NASA wants better weather reports from Mars so future landings, and eventually human visits, are less risky. But online, the real launch happened in the comments, where people instantly turned this into a Schmidt vs. Musk scoreboard fight.
The spiciest debate? Whether this is actually “beating SpaceX to Mars” or just a cheeky headline. One camp rolled its eyes and said, basically, slow down: this is a science orbiter, not a giant people-carrying Mars ship. Another camp gleefully noted that if Relativity gets there first, Elon Musk fans will probably shrug and say SpaceX was aiming for something “more ambitious” anyway. Translation: the community smells a future bragging-rights war from orbit.
There was also plenty of side-eye about NASA trusting a company that hasn’t fully proven itself yet. Relativity’s first rocket failed mid-flight, its next big rocket still isn’t flying, and even sympathetic commenters called the 2028 timeline ambitious. Others were more blunt, saying using private rocket companies is “highly concerning.” And because the internet can’t resist a meme, one joker immediately imagined asking Claude to build a rocket “using only lisp, if and regex statements” — because apparently every big tech story must now detour through AI comedy. The vibes are equal parts awe, skepticism, and popcorn-ready billionaire rivalry.
Key Points
- •NASA awarded Relativity Space a contract to build, launch, and send the Aeolus spacecraft to Mars on a planned 2028 mission.
- •Aeolus will carry four instruments to provide daily global observations of dust, winds, and temperature in the Martian atmosphere.
- •The contract follows NASA’s public-private partnership model, where NASA supplies the science payload and the company provides infrastructure and shares development risk.
- •Relativity remains unproven in orbital launch, having seen Terran-1 fail in 2023 while still developing its larger Terran R rocket.
- •Eric Schmidt took a majority stake in Relativity last year, became CEO, and now leads the company during its push toward the Mars mission.