Abandoned and fair game
Oppy’s gone. But not really.
After 14 years and a record distance travelled, Mars explorer Opportunity has succumbed to a big, bad dust storm. Its solar panels, extremely worn anyway, have been declared useless and unable to gather enough sunlight for the batteries to power the interplanetary dune buggy.
So there it sits, another relic of Space Age Earth, far from home, awaiting … what?
Meanwhile, parked up on a nearby natural satellite, shrouded in moon dust, keys tucked up on the visor, are moon buggies almost too numerous to mention.
The American versions, called Lunar Roving Vehicles (LRVs), were carted to the moon with Apollo missions 15, 16 and 17 during 1971 and 1972. There is some minor damage to the latter two vehicles, inflicted by men who can pilot supersonic aircraft between mountains or a rocket from Earth to the moon but can’t drive a surface vehicle for toffee. Their 36-volt silver-zinc potassium hydroxide batteries will be dead flat by now and they are non-rechargeable. Part of the great American disposable culture. Still, everything else will be as you’d expect a single-owner, low mileage, hardly used vehicle to be. They would probably still pass a Warrant of Fitness.
But the Americans aren’t the only ones to have used the lunar car park. The Soviet space programme built a series of four buggies called Lunokhods. The first was destroyed during launch, but the next two arrived safely on the moon in 1970 and 1973. The last was built but remains on Earth. They probably use it to carry secrets around the Kremlin.
The two on the moon have rechargeable batteries and were for transport for cosmonauts when they made manned moon landings. As far as we know that did not happen (but I’m open to any conspiracy theories).
And then there’s Yutu, the Chinese contribution. That robotic rover arrived on the moon in 2014, remaining operational until July, 2016. It too, is still there.
Meanwhile, on Mars, Opportunity is not the only vehicle making tracks on the formerly pristine planet. Sojourner went up with the Pathfinder mission in 1997 and Spirit, Opportunity’s twin, arrived on Mars in 2004. Both vehicles remain there.
So what’s their legal status? As no nation can own the moon or Mars, they are not parked on someone’s property. Are they therefore considered abandoned and can anyone claim them if they are able to reach them?
If so, this is good news for a lot of people.
Old cars, ripe for restoration, used to be regularly discovered on rural properties, usually rusting in a barn or collecting leaves under a tree. A little haggling with the farmer and the vehicles would find their way to a workshop in town, where enthusiasts would lovingly rebuild them to a new glory.
Could this crowd be looking longingly into space, lusting after the derelict vehicles and dreaming of bringing them home, adding a few modifications and putting them on the road or the beach?
Imagine the kudos at the local car club, gliding in on an electric vehicle designed by NASA rocket scientists, built (mostly) by General Motors Space Division and driven by famous astronauts!
But the final, biggest prize is the red 2008 Tesla Roadster, formerly driven by Elon Musk as his transport to work, driven by a suited up mannequin, slipping silently through space on a trajectory to infinity. Bring that baby home and the crown of the car club is yours!
Space and those round bits of unclaimed real estate, and all the vehicles parked thereon, are fair game to the adventurous.