I was in my 30s when the Opportunity Mars rover was launched in 2003, on what was meant to be a 90-day mission that turned out to stretch over 15 years. My father, a very talented machinist, had passed away three years earlier. But when I was little, he worked on pieces to the satellites that were to be used in Reagan’s so-called “Star Wars” program (Strategic Defense Initiative.) My interest in space technology like the rover had been fostered from the very first time Da brought home those tiny, shiny metal pieces, the rejects of the ones he’d worked on that day. I could only imagine the ones he made getting sent up into the sky. In my defense, as a child, I had no idea the Star Wars program was a laser and weapons proposal to add to an increasingly alarming nuclear arms race. Luckily, the SDI never officially made it off the ground.
When NASA declared the Opportunity rover officially dead on Wednesday, February 13th, 2019, scientists and space lovers mourned the loss of the 15-year-old exploration device. Its last words were, effectively, “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.” (Cue me crying over this dramatic sentiment.) Unlike the Star Wars program, the Opportunity was on a peaceful mission, studying rock and soil on the red planet. In 2018 Opportunity encountered a powerful dust storm, and shut down to conserve energy. Scientists at NASA hoped it would awaken when the dust storms cleared. When it didn’t, they waited for a wind storm to see if the solar panels had simply been covered with too much dust, and then tried a series of protocols to “wake up” the rover. Sadly, none of those protocols worked.
My battery is low and it’s getting dark.
NASA posted the list of wake up songs they played to attempt to rouse Opportunity (over the last 8 months, after a dust storm caused the rover to shut down to conserve energy) on Spotify, and it’s full of classics like Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” and Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”
A new rover, The Mars Curiosity, launched in 2018 and posted a tribute thanking Opportunity on its official Twitter account.
It seems to me you lived your life
like a rover in the wind
never fading with the sunset
when the dust set in.
Your tracks will always fall here,
among Mars’ reddest hills;
your candle’s burned out long before
your science ever will.#ThanksOppy. I owe you so much. pic.twitter.com/x0i5WqA9sL
In a strange way, it was the posting of the song list, and the Twitter account, and the fact that space nerds, scientists and celebrities were literally crying over the loss of Opportunity, that gave me my greatest hope for the future since this administration hired a bunch of climate change deniers. Opportunity was a machine, but it was a faithful one, and it was a workhorse. It continued on new mission after new mission long after it had passed the first mission’s end date. It sent back photos of a harsh but beautiful planet most of us will most likely never see–something “other,” but special. It brought us closer to another world, in a time when xenophobia has become rampant, and “other” is vilified. At the beginning, Opportunity’s hard work was given meaning and value, and at the end, its loss was acknowledged with grief and tears.
We would do well, as a country, to learn from that.
As we send ICE agents to arrest undocumented workers who are trying to make a living and feed their families, we should remember this moment, where we appreciated and mourned a hard worker in a foreign land.
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Photo Credit: WikiImages on Pixabay
About Sandy Roffey
S.M. Roffey is a writer, mother, former early educator, comic book lover, and volunteer cosplayer who lives in the Northeast with her genderqueer spouse and 3 LGBTQ kids. By day she is a virtual assistant to #RevPit’s Jeni Chappelle, and at night she writes adult fiction fantasy. She has studied Anthropology and Early Education, and her personal essays have been featured on The Good Men Project, Shethority, Huffington Post and BlogHer. She is currently writing a novel and blogging about books and writing at www.smroffey.com.
