Mark Watney ain’t got nothing on Opportunity.

His 90 day mission is going on the sixteenth year. Sixteen years. That’s sixty four times the intended life expectancy.

Over that time he’s sampled soil, sent back 225,000 breathtaking pictures, traveled 28 miles, and clawed his crippled, blinded way out of trenches with one arthritic arm and a gimpy wheel.

But he keeps going.

Somewhere in that image is a little blue dot. That blue dot in a sheer hellscape of electrostatically charged, smothering dust which is currently raging over a quarter of the entire red planet is him. On mission. On task. Wheels grinding and teeth gritted (well, they’re locked up that way at this point, but, you get the picture.) It could be the end of his world. He doesn’t care. He’s got a job to do.

You’ve got something important to do, too. Keep on.

More nerd porn from 54.6 million kilometers away courtesy of Opportunity.

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