the thing that gets me about Opportunity is that she made it 15 years when she was only expected to last 90 days.
can you imagine the wonder in NASA’s collective eyes just on day 91? the hope?
and knowing that each and every incredible extra day after 90 could be that little rover’s last, the mission had to continue. it was, after all, quite an opportunity.
human brain: Opportunity rover accomplished its mission and then some! It lasted far longer than we could’ve ever hoped. This should be celebrated, Opportunity did really well.
monkey brain: BUT SHE DIED ALL ALONE AND IN THE DARK AND ON A PLANET ALL THE WAY OUT IN SPACE AWAY FROM HOME!!! DOES SHE KNOW HOW PROUD OF HER WE ARE?! DID SHE THINK WE FORGOT ABOUT HER?! I LOVE HER AND I WANT HER TO BE HAPPY AND TO THRIVE AND I JUST WANT TO HUG HER AND LET HER KNOW HOW MUCH I CARE ABOUT HER!!! WE DIDN’T FORGET ABOUT YOU, OPPY!!! WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH AND I WOULD KILL ANYONE AND EVERYONE JUST FOR YOU TO HAVE PASSED AMONG FRIENDS AND FAMILY HERE ON EARTH!!!
“my battery is low and it’s getting dark” is so hauntingly human, so crushingly lonely. I can’t articulate the deep, profound ache that sentence evokes. It’s acceptance and defeat and terror and sadness all at once, all from one tiny machine we asked to explore the stars for us.
this morning NASA abandoned their mars rover Opportunity (aka Oppy) because it (she) got hit by a storm on Mars and it knocked her camera and wheels out and her last words to the team were “my battery is low and it is getting cold”. I know she’s a machine but I’m devastated. Oppy is the one who discovered water on Mars. RIP oppy ily space baby
they didn’t abandon her!! they tried eight months to reach her!!!! as their last farewell to her yesterday they played her “I’ll be seeing you” by Billie Holiday:
“I’ll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I’ll be looking at the moon
But I’ll be seeing you”
They love her so much and they tried so hard!!!
Oh man, It doesn’t end there.
This isn’t the first song NASA sent Opportunity. They had a playlist:
It’s on Spotify, it’s called “Opportunity, wake up!“
This is what’s great about NASA and it’s what’s great about people. These are world-class engineers. When they sent a rover to another planet they could have easily looked at it as just another scientific tool. But people don’t do that. We can and will get emotionally attached to the most inanimate of objects. We can and will anthropomorphize anything. And frankly Opportunity’s camera mast looks like a little face with eyes and everything, so why not?
So they started calling it her.
They nicknamed her Oppy.
They told her to take a selfie not long ago.
After 15 years of Oppy flipping the double bird to her original 90 day life expectancy, when a planet-spanning dust storm finally knocked her out and she stopped responding to the engineer’s wake-up messages, they started playing music for her.
And after 8 months and almost 1000 unanswered wake-up messages, when it was finally clear that Oppy was never going to wake up, the last thing these world-class NASA engineers did for their little rover on another planet
ifesbob 