as small as a world and as large as alone, soilrockslove: squiditty: edgebug: ...

7:40am July 25, 2014

squiditty:

edgebug:

monobeartheater:

arachnescurse:

Today I learned that the Curiosity sang itself ‘Happy Birthday’ on its year anniversary of being on Mars.

All alone.

Hundreds of thousands of miles from anyone or anything.

Guys I am depressed over robots now.

oh god this is the saddest thing i have ever read

Guys, shhh. No, this isn’t sad.

Curiosity isn’t hundreds of thousands of miles from anyone or anything. Curiosity has Spirit, Opportunity, Mars 3, Sojourner, Viking 1, and Viking 2 to keep him company on the red planet.

Opportunity is still exploring; Spirit, while still functional, is stuck in a crater, so cannot move around very much. The rest of them are quiet, asleep; old and beautiful and dignified in their silence

Curiosity sang Happy Birthday to himself and he had Spirit and Opportunity with him—and he had an entire planet down below to celebrate his life, his achievements, his brilliance

Curiosity sang Happy Birthday to celebrate an entire year of doing what he was designed to do; an entire year of exploring a planet on which he was not born, an entire year of roving and collecting information

an entire year of Mars becoming his home to share with his precursors, several of which are miraculously still doing their jobs (Opportunity was only expected to last 90 days; he’s lasted TEN YEARS)

it was a song of absolute euphoric joy, not one of loneliness

Curiosity is the exact opposite of lonely; he has hundreds of thousands of people down below who adore him, family at ground control to communicate with him constantly; and plenty of kin on the red planet’s surface to keep him company.

This is the exact opposite of sad.

We didn’t abandon the Mars robots. We sent them home.

On the Mars Rovers - every sensor on them was made to detect something on Mars. Every facet of their design was meant to help them survive on Mars.

So Curiosity sang “Happy Birthday” with the whole of Mars for company. With the Red Planet streaming in through it’s optics. In the exact place that it was meant to be.