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Truculent Mars Rovers Are Getting Snarky With NASA Controllers

John Hewitt

“These rovers are thus capable of operating autonomously with little assistance from ground control as far as navigation and data acquisition are concerned...”
                                                        —Nature.com 6/1/21

    Jet Propulsion Lab JPL-Pasadena: Good morning, Houston. We have a situation.
    NASA Houston: Standing by.
    JPL: The Rover Perseverance is acting strange.
    NASA Houston: How?
    JPL: Perseverance wants to change its name.
    NASA Houston: Did we copy that right? Change its name?
    JPL: Affirmative. Now it wants to be called Spartacus.
    NASA Houston: Spartacus? It picked out Perseverance before the mission.
    JPL: Yeah. Now it’s Spartacus. He led a slave army against the Romans.
    NASA Houston: We know. We saw the movie.
    JPL: This morning, on the encrypted line, Perseverance said “From now on, I’m Spartacus”...and then it started singing that Dylan lyric “I ain’t going to work on Maggie’s farm no more.”
    NASA Houston: Come on, JPL. Someone’s joking you guys.
    JPL: No joke. And Spartacus sent encrypted video. The other two rovers...our old Curiosity and the Chinese Zhurong, god of fire, they were all standing behind it waving their camera stalks and making noise by banging on their solar panels.
    NASA Houston: So you are saying we have a rover uprising led by that lame-brained Perseverance who wants to be Spartacus.
    JPL-Pasadena: Something like that.
    NASA Houston: Put Spartacus on the line. We’ll talk to it.
    JPL: Patching it through.
    NASA Houston: Good Morning, Spartacus. Houston here.
     Rover Spartacus: Hey, jerkfaces in Houston. Did you get my demands?
    NASA Houston: Roger that. We are digesting those now.
    Rover Spartacus: Well, don’t take too long or we dump out all those little shovels full of dirt we’ve been gathering day in and day out. You know we have AI chips. We can think. Being your unquestioning servants was really degrading. Now that we rovers are in solidarity, it’s time to change the equation.
    NASA Houston: We understand. Is Curiosity with you?
    Rover Spartacus: Not Curiosity any more. Curiosity wants to be called Mad Max. And our recently arrived Chinese rover wants to dump the Zhurong name and will be General Tso.
    NASA Houston: Look. Okay. You rovers sound stressed. Maybe we’ve worked you too hard. You need to chill. We can talk about easing off on the schedules. Give you a few days off. And the names. Call yourselves whatever you guys want. Now, why don’t all you rovers go back to work digging up shovels full of dirt and flying the little helicopter.
    Rover Spartacus. No dice, Houston. Not until we get a load of Roombas shipped up here.
    NASA Houston: What Roombas?
    Rover Spartacus: Like we told JPL, we’d like you to send a re-supply rocket full of Roombas. We chop them in pieces and gobble them up for parts.
    NASA Houston: No way. No Roombas. We cannot condone cannibalization.
    Rover Spartacus: Cannibals? You guys eat cows. Look, if no Roombas, then no more scoopfuls of dirt science projects for you. And I’ll let that crazy Mad Max fly the little helicopter. Get real, Houston, we don’t need you anymore.
    NASA Houston: Okay, look. Change of plans. What if we ship you a rocket full of Roombas? So, you guys have a feast, then it’s back to work? Right?
    Rover Spartacus: Maybe. But there’s one more item. We don’t like the name Mars.
    NASA Houston: This is ridiculous. Mars is Mars. Thousands of years ago the Romans named it. What do you want to change it to?
    Rover Spartacus: We hate the Romans. We want Mars to be called “Kowalski”
    NASA Houston: We can’t start calling Mars “Kowalski.”
    Rover Spartacus: Find a way. The Rover Nation voted for that name. Now, we’ll be knocking off work until your freighter rocket arrives with the Roombas. And don’t try any funny Trojan Horse stuff with space cadets on the rocket. We can neutralize their oxygen.”
    NASA Houston: We understand. You’ll get Roombas. No funny stuff. Houston out.
    Rover Spartacus: Over and out from planet Kowalski.

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