Hopefully Stu won't mind too much, but here is his brilliant prose on Opportunity reaching 2000 sols.
Don't forget to go and read more of his AstroPoetry
here.
Rendezvous 2KWhat were the chances of this brief encounter?
One – not even a decade old –
A fearless robot of grinding gears
That has roved for five long years
To reach this place; an explorer born on a world
Of painfully-bright blue skies and burnt
Marmalade twilight. The other,
A graceless child born in the cold, empty space
Between worlds, a gnarled and
Vacuum-chewed chunk of ancient iron
That has not moved even a hair’s width since
Falling from sky who-knows-how-many years ago…
How many times have those weary wheels turned
In the last 2000 sols? One spin for every
Dream a child has ever had of walking
On Mars? One turn for every time a tired scientist,
Leaning towards a flickering JPL screen
Has yearned to see Just A Little More?
And how many times has this nobbled nugget
Of starstone been covered by dirt and ash
And then exposed to the flashing stars and sepia sun
Of Mars again? A dozen? A
thousand?
We will never know. But, briefly,
Its aeons-long loneliness is over, and standing
Between two of Meridiani’s Shai-Hulud dunes
It will have company for a while - at least
Until the half-hidden humps of Endeavour’s
Encircling hills beckon Opportunity again,
And then, turning her lightly-dusted back
On Block Island she’ll return to roving
Once more, ignoring the few Farkers that fail
To feel the beauty of her journey as she follows
The sapphire blue star of Earth towards
Her destiny.
Strange, that these two travellers should meet,
That their paths should cross here and now.
So different, yet so alike; each one only part way
Through its journey. The rover will rove on,
Drawn to Endeavour like a metal Martian moth
To a flame, watching the twin moons wax and wane
As the miles are slowly eaten away until, one day,
Her wheels finally scrunch on the gravelled base
Of the great crater’s sun-soaked slopes
And yet
another “new Mars” is revealed.
The meteorite will stay right here for many
Years yet until, one sol in some far future year,
The fumbling fingers of gauntleted hands will wrap around it
And place it in the great Museum of Mars
For all to see! Fat, thick-coated water-bloated
Earthers and desiccated, pale Barsoomians alike will all
File slowly past it in its case, silently staring through
Reflections of their curious faces in the glass to
See the famed “Block Island” on its stand,
All trying to understand how one oh-so-ugly rock
Caused such twittering excitement on Terra in ‘09
Before simply being left behind…
© Stuart Atkinson 2009