Family Life

Last week the dismaying news came out that, due to budget cuts, NASA would be abandoning the Mars rover robot Spirit. This tough little space-faring golf cart landed on Mars just before my first child, Daniel, was born. I had been following the mission since before the rocket lifted off on its seven-month voyage. At the time of its landing, I couldn’t decide if I was more excited about the imminent arrival of the spacecraft or my son.

Spirit sent back stunning images of the red planet, of a quality and detail never seen before. The scientific community was all a-buzz, and NASA did an excellent job promoting the mission to the general public. I divided the time of my parental leave equally between my wife, my child, and “my” Mars robot.

The original goal was for Spirit to wander the Martian surface for three months, before its batteries went flat or its gears wore out. Four years later, it’s suffering the effects of wear and tear but is still going strong. It has exceeded NASA’s expectations beyond their wildest dreams.

Which is why it was sad to hear they could no longer afford the maintenance and were going to leave the robot to run its batteries flat in the Martian winter, dead beyond any hope of recovery.

After several days of public outcry, NASA came back saying that the original statement was premature and mistaken, and Spirit was in no danger of budget cuts. Phew! I could breathe a sigh of relief. Isn’t it funny how attached we get sometimes to non-living things? Even ones 500 million kilometers away? OK, so maybe it’s just me. But don’t you fret now and then over some object you’ve become attached to?

Photo note: landing module for Mars rover Spirit, courtesy NASA JPL.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 7:19 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.