Any day now one of my dearest friends – perhaps
even two of them – will die, leaving a huge hole in my world. Even though I've
imagined and rehearsed it in my mind countless times I don't know how I'll
react when I hear the news, which I've known is coming for a couple of years
now; all I know is that when the awful day comes, and I read the announcement,
I'll feel like a part of me has died too.
So who are these beloved friends? Treasured
schoolmates from years ago, suffering from some terrible illness? Work
colleagues, injured in a horrible accident and left lying in a bed, with drips
in their arms and machines beeping around them like R2D2? No. They're machines.
Robots. Or, to be more precise, rovers. I know them as "Lame
Spirit" and "Oppy," but you'll know them better as 'Spirit'
and 'Opportunity,' the Mars Exploration Rovers, and to me, they've developed
characters and personalities every bit as loveable and real as Artoo's. They're
like Serenitys on wheels.
I'm proud of them and all they've achieved,
those plucky, apparently immortal machines. They arrived on Mars all those
years ago so bright and so shiny, their clean metalwork flashing in the Martian
sun as they emerged like aluminum butterflies from their cocoons. Now they're
weary and worn, and each day they wake seems like a miracle. Oppy is still in
pretty good shape as she works her way around the serrated rim of Victoria
Crater, but on the other side of Mars my poor gal Spirit is suffering.
Smothered in Sun-dimming, circuit-clogging dust and dragging a frozen wheel
behind her as she hauls herself around Homeplate, she's on borrowed time and she
knows it.
In fact, everyone following their incredible
mission – from the white bunny-suited techs who physically built the rovers, to
the Mars nuts like me who follow their journeys of exploration daily on our
flickering PC screens – knows that both rovers are living charmed lives now. Both
rovers have now survived on Mars ten times longer
than they were expected to, so every day (sorry, every 'sol') is a bonus. If
both died while I wrote these very words, they would have fulfilled their
mission a thousand times over, and no-one would consider their passing
premature.
Except people like me.
Scattered around this achingly beautiful blue
and white globe – by now pale-skinned and square-eyed after countless hours
spent locked indoors staring at flickering monitors – there are many thousands
of people who have, since Sol 1, been the rovers' constant companions as they
rolled across the rugged Martian landscape. We've walked patiently and
faithfully alongside these incredible, death-defying space age Lewis and Clarks
as they trundled across the wide open spaces of Barsoom.
Sitting here, typing this, I can remember
keeping Oppy company as she explored the rubble-strewn interiors of Eagle and
then Endurance crater, before helping her weave her way around bank after
endless bank of deathtrap dunes of butterscotch-hued dust on her epic trek to
Meridiani's Deep South. I was there, brushing fine grains of dust from Spirit's aching back
as she trundled past wind-sculpted outcrops of ancient, jagged rock on her way
up the rugged slopes of Husband Hill, urging her onwards, telling her she can
do it, she Can Do It, she just has to keep going ... and after triumphantly
reaching the Hill's summit with her, I paused with her there, with my hands
resting on her dust-scratched solar panels, staring down with her in wide-eyed
wonder at the rusted world below...
Of course, I didn't do all those things really,
but it felt like it as I sat here, mouse click-a-clicking on one weblink after
another. Looking at the latest images from the rovers has become every much a
part of my daily routine as brushing my teeth or swearing at a politician's
lies on TV. I get up, and before I go to work – before I've even rubbed the
sleep out of my eyes – I've booted up my PC, gone online and headed straight to
Exploratorium to see if any new images came down thru the night. Back from work
hours later and before my bag has even hit the floor I'm checking for new
pictures again, letting out a disappointed sigh if there are none to be found,
celebrating with a "Yes!!" if an as yet unclicked link, written in
glorious bright blue, appears at the foot of the list...
I now have two homes. In the Real World I have a
flat, with shelves groaning under the weight of copies of books about Mars and
walls decorated with printouts of MER pictures. In the world we so quaintly
used to call Cyberspace I live on a forum called Unmanned Spaceflight.com,
now one of the world's most respected meeting places for people with a passion
for space exploration. There we talk about the rovers and their discoveries
daily, discuss what we can see – and sometimes think we can see! – on
the new images, and even post our own images, Photoshop merged and colorized
versions of the already-spectacular black and white raw images enjoyed by
Everyone Else. Every time I log on to UMSF I feel as welcome and comfortable as
Norm walking through the door in Cheers.
And every time I log on I feel a cold nugget of
fear in the pit of my stomach as I wonder if this is the time I read that one
of my friends has died.
I'm heading there now, just as soon as I've
finished writing this.
Not tonight. Please, not tonight...
NOTE: The
views of this article are the author's and do not reflect the policies of the
National Space Society.
Visit SPACE.com/Ad Astra Online for more
news, views and scientific inquiry from the National Space Society.
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