STRANGE BUT TRUE

Nasa’s Mars Curiosity Rover, which has been sending back data from Mars since 2012, tweeted out a little birthday message to itself last Sunday: “I touched down on #Mars six years ago. Celebrating my 6th landing anniversary.“In 2013, scientists programmed the lonely robot to play happy birthday to itself. But they never did it again. Last year, The Atlantic asked Nasa why. The space agency’s Florence Tan responded that the process of generating and transmitting commands to Curiosity took weeks of preparation. To them, Curiosity isn’t a cute robot but a $2.5bn asset. “In a nutshell, there is no scientific gain from the rover playing music or singing Happy

Birthday on Mars,” she said. It would be fun if it did, though.