THE LITTLE ROVERS THAT COULD

The essay is short and very simple; the words are almost heartbreaking: “I used to live in an orphanage. It was dark and cold and lonely. At night, I looked up at the sparkly sky and felt better. I dreamed I could fly there. In America, I can make all my dreams come true. . . . Thank you for the Spirit and the Opportunity.”1 Sofi Collis was abandoned at birth into a Siberian orphanage and brought by her adoptive parents to live in Scottsdale, Arizona. In 2003, at age nine, she was writing in response to a call from NASA for names for its upcoming Mars rovers. A team of judges selected by the Lego Company and the nonprofit Planetary Society painstakingly whit­tled 10,000 entries down to thirty-three, and NASA made the final selection. Sofi unveiled the names at a pre-launch press conference hosted by Sean O’Keefe, NASA’s administrator, who noted that her story twinned the two original spacefaring countries. It’s safe to say her dreams are as boundless as space itself.

Six years later, in language that was formal, cumbersome, and numbingly prosaic relative to the lofty sentiment it conveyed, the U. S. House of Representatives gave a formal nod to these remark­able robotic emissaries with the following resolution, number 67 from the first session of the 111th session of Congress, adopted unanimously:

Whereas the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity suc­cessfully landed on Mars on January 3, 2004, and January 24, 2004, respectively, on missions to search for evidence indicating that Mars

once held conditions hospitable to life; whereas NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Laboratory (JPL), managed by the California Institute of Technol­ogy (Caltech), designed and built the Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity; whereas Cornell University led the development of advanced scien­tific instruments carried by the 2 Rovers, and continues to play a leading role in the operation of the 2 Rovers and the processing and analysis of the images and other data sent back to Earth; whereas the Rovers relayed over a quarter million images taken from the surface of Mars; whereas studies conducted by the Rovers have indicated that early Mars was characterized by impacts, explosive volcanoes, and subsurface water; whereas each Rover has discovered geologi­cal evidence of ancient Martian environments where habitable condi­tions may have existed; whereas the Rovers have explored over 21 kilometers of Martian terrain, climbed Martian hills, descended deep into large craters, survived dust storms, and endured three cold, dark Martian winters; and whereas Spirit and Opportunity will have passed 5 years of successful operation on the surface of Mars on January 3, 2009, and January 24, 2009, respectively, far exceeding the original 90-Martian day mission requirement by a factor of 20, and are con­tinuing their missions of surface exploration and scientific discovery: Now therefore be it resolved, that the House of Representatives com­mends the engineers, scientists, and technicians of the Jet Propul­sion Laboratory and Cornell University for their successful execution and continued operation of the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity; and recognizes the success and significant scientific contributions of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers.2