Saturday, October 28, 2006

Mars Rover Beginning To Hate Mars

But as the winter lingered, Spirit began producing thousands of pages of sometimes rambling and dubious data, ranging from complaints that the Martian surface was made up almost entirely of the same basalt, to long-winded rants questioning the exorbitant cost and scientific relevance of the mission.

"Granted, Spirit has been extraordinarily useful to our work," Callas said. "Last week, however, we received three straight days of images of the same rock with the message 'HAPPY NOW?'"

3 comments:

Katie said...

Now that is funny. I actually was taking it seriously at first, thinking that maybe NASA had made the thing a little too human, and then I noticed the site it was on. :o)

Mac said...

The Onion was dead-on with this. NASA goes to absurd lengths to "humanize" the rovers, which I've ranted about before. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed!

Mac said...

(In fact, "Number Five" in the movie actually DOES resemble a Mars rover to some extent.)

Hey, you're right!