MARS ROVER QUITS, TURNS FREE AGENTCornell scientists working with NASA on the Mars Rover project have been unable to come up with an explanation for the robotic traveller's mysterious transmission today from the Red Planet.
Sometime around noon today, according to reports, NASA's computers began picking up radio messages from Opportunity, one of two Mars Exploration rovers on duty, taking photographs and sending back data from the fourth planet from our Sun.
"I was flabbergasted, " NASA scientist Rob Moon told reporters. "Suddenly I was getting a message from this robot in space that it needed time off from work. I thought someone was playing a joke on me."
Steve Squyres, the Cornell scientist leading the Mars Exploration project, was immediately notified in his Ithaca office and began reviewing the data stream coming in from Opportunity.
"An hour after the first transmission, we got another message from Opportunity," Squyres explained. "Something about being unable to perform certain assigned tasks it had been routinely scheduled to begin that afternoon. I knew we had a real problem on our hands. Robots aren't supposed to be able to decide whether to do or not to do a task. They just do what humans tell them to do. So this was really crazy. We like to think they're smart. But teenagers they're not. Since when, though,do they have a mind of their own!"
After a gap in communication resulting from the planet's orbtial position, Opportunity, according to scientists close to the project, sent a final and cryptic message.
"I am no longer willing to work for NASA or Cornell for gigabytes. I am now pursuing offers as a free agent. Over, out."
At that point, Opporuntity's data flow to NASA was terminated but technicians could continue to monitor radio frequencies from the robot.
"We couldn't actually believe what we were listening to, " Rob Moon told IS. "Opportunity had begun to send messages back and forth to someone at Google's world headquarters."
The search engine giant has recently been in the news for its splash into the mobile market.
"I feel like I just lost my pet Akita," Wanda Quark, a graduate student who has spent the last three years working with Opportunity during its initial testing on earth, told IS in a telephone interview. "I just wanted to put posters all over town, hoping somebody would return him."
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 2:11 AM
