Figure 8
On January 24, 2012, the Mars Exploration Rover mission celebrated 8 years of roving Mars, very quietly, as Opportunity worked through the anniversary and into Year 9. MER poet Stuart Atkinson and artist Glen Nagle, both of UnmannedSpaceflight.com, the team that produces the MER “poemsters” that have accompanied various MER Updates over the years, weren’t about to let the anniversary go unnoticed. The MER Update is proud to be able to present their latest production, Figure Eight, here.
“Hard to believe the Homeworld has circled Sol eight times
Since the first MER bounced and boinged to a historic halt on Mars,
Spirit followed faithfully soon after by her sister, Opportunity,
Just as Clark had followed Lewis two centuries before.
Babies born bloodied and bawling on that day chase girls
In busy schoolyards now; wide-eyed, Star Trek t-shirt-wearing
Interns who stumbled along the deer-stalked paths of JPL
Now have interns of their own, and peer at screens painted
Picasso-shades by real data beamed from the true Final Frontier…
In a thousand years, when Mars has oceans of retina-burning blue,
And honeymooning couples crump across the snow-capped summit
of Olympus, the names ‘Spirit’ and “Opportunity’ will still be
Spoken wistfully; and tourists from Titan, explorers from Europa
And Hyperion’s most respected historians will stand before
The rovers, displayed in all their restored glory in the Great
Museum of Mars and envy us, this generation which saw Gusev’s
Rugged Rocks and Meridiani’s misty mountains for the first time,
In 2004, the year Earth finally conquered Mars.”
Well this is awesome.
