@pluralistic My condolences — may its memory be a blessing — it had a good life and did amazing work! I’ve been at more than one spacecraft funeral and I know saying that last, remote goodbye is always hard. I’ll never forget watching that final signal spike from Cassini as it tumbled into Saturn, or the stories shared as the MER team said goodbye to Spirit. Even that old xkcd comic was enough to send many team members into tears.

I hope you will have a good wake for your old and dear friend.❤️🛰️

@martinvermeer @pluralistic Ha! To the team that designed and built it, then operated it for years, "babysat" it in the clean room, sent it off to Mars, and then sat in countless meetings day after day looking through its "eyes" out at the surface of another planet, caring for it through dust storms and cheering for it with each discovery, it was much more than "a f-ing robot."

So much more that I wrote a whole f-ing book about it ;) :

bookshop.org/p/books/seeing-li…

@cyberlyra @martinvermeer @pluralistic Randall also did a brilliant job with a live xkcd stream during the landing of Philae on Comet 67P in 2014.

But then arguably we at ESA did one of the finest ever jobs of anthropomorphising spacecraft & connecting them emotionally with the cartoons & stories about Rosetta & Philae – they still have the power to make me cry.

youtu.be/HD2zrF3I_II?feature=s…