On February 13th, 2019, after 15 years, Opportunity Rover is declared dead. The last transmission:
my battery is low, and it is getting dark.
i have been here, searching, and exploring, and documenting, because humans in all their fragile wonderful humanity looked up,and saw the stars, and named them after heroes that died horrible lonely deaths, and after the large animals that shared their velvety nights, and after lovers
and they wrote themselves into the skies. thousands of years later, they sent me to join them, to travel the stars, to this place that is home-but-not-a-home. hello, how are you? i said to the barren rocks and the orange dust and the sunsets that are beautiful in the same way that the dark blue of ocean trenches is beautiful. i am opportunity, and i’m here to tell you stories about these strange beings that build machines to reach the stars. and i am here to tell them stories about you.
fifteen times around the sun, and i spun through nights and days, and i sent pictures back across the gulf, and on earth - tiny and blue and temporary - people looked at the images and gasped, and showed them to their friends, and cried over them in the feeltoomuch hours of the nights, and looked up at the bits of forever they could see from the ground - the galaxies and planets and moons and stars- and i hope they thought of me, patiently beaming pictures of otherness back to them.
i am (was?) only a metal frame with some electronics. i am not human, and i was not born, but the scientists with stars in their hearts named me and put some of their own precious humanity into me. so among the rocks and the dust, i roam, and i explore, and i am so far from home
hello, my name is opportunity. what is this? what is this? what is this?
a storm roared out of the ether eight months ago and savaged part of my metal frame, that nothingness-but-somethingness. i am tired, and i am damaged. and it has been so long, and this red dust is making it hard to sing. my humans, they tried to save me. for eight long months, they tried to reach me, but part of being human is the heartbreak, and after all, i was never supposed to last this long.
my battery is low, and it is getting dark.
my name was opportunity. the stars say hello.
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