Tumblr Thread: NASA's Care for Opportunity Rover is a Feels Expedition

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Eric Lund
Nov 14, 2020 8:00 PM EST

There was something extremely poetic about Opportunity shutting down that struck a chord with a lot of people. Workers at NASA really liked to anthropomorphize rovers, like the time they got Curiosity to sing "Happy Birthday." If we know one thing about people and their relationship with adorable robots, it's that humans can pack bond with anything, including a Roomba.

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  • 01
    Text - newromaantics 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 l'm devastated. Oppy is the one who discovered water on Mars. RIP oppy ily space baby
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  • 02
    Text - myhomework-is-onfire 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'l find you in the morning sun And when the night is new 'll be looking at the moon But l'll be seeing you" They love her so much and they tried so hard!!
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  • 03
    Text - stickmanbrandon Oh man, It doesn't end there. This isn't the first song NASA sent Opportunity. They had a playlist: https://www.space.com/41434-mars-rover- opportunity-wakeup-music-playlist.html? fbclid=lwAR3uL6q4tOmLQTIEhiwYegGc99nv4 NO1HQKItpCLQiQYlptBOevNN6ulyT8 It's on Spotify, it's called "Opportunity, wake up!"
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  • 04
    Text - 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
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  • 05
    Text - 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 Was play her a love song
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