I was awed when viewing the drop-dead perfection of the landing of the Perseverance rover on the planet Mars recently. But disappointed in the days since. Once again, the Martians have failed to show up and greet their guests! Where are their manners?

The nearly 3 million mile journey of Perseverance took six months after its launch from Florida. Its arrival on Mars with the little Ingenuity helicopter strapped to its belly was downright majestic. Exactly on schedule. For the first time, the NASA engineers gave autonomy to the car-sized rover and let it decide for itself, during the minutes of descent, the safest spot to land on. And it landed less than a car-length from the spot that was originally designated. Whoopee! Bullseye!

Shockingly, in spite of this gala occasion, no red carpet was rolled out on the Orange-Red Planet!

First, though, just to recap the event, the landing site is on the Jezero Crater which was once a lake the size of Lake Tahoe. The yearlong mission of the rover is to explore a 12 mile area in order to:

• (1) figure out if humans can inhabit any part of the planet, in case someone’s willing to try.
  (2) collect rock samples storing them in a sterile tube till 2031 by which time maybe USPS or Amazon Prime can deliver them to scientists on Earth. The contract is out now for the space delivery vehicle.
• (3) test how to produce oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-dominant air of Mars.
• (4) carry out planned experiments using 7 scientific instruments, and documenting them with 23 video cameras, 2 microphones, and 12 million algorithms.
• (5) test whether the Ingenuity helicopter can survive the 100 degrees below zero nighttime temperatures in order to make controlled air flights, and, if so, to provide reconnaissance for the rover’s travels.
• (6) determine whether ancient microbial life ever existed in the former lake.
  

Now, I don’t know about microbial life, but as anyone who grew up reading Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comic books can tell you, there certainly IS life on Mars. And on other planets and galaxies, too, including some that NASA hasn’t even discovered yet. Such as the planet Mongo, for instance, ruled over by the evil emperor Ming the Merciless. Or Draconia, home of Kang the Cruel. (Aliens seem to have as much difficulty with their heads-of-state as we do).

Of course, we may not enjoy meeting some of the interplanetary life-forms. Some of them may have bad habits. My daughter Judy – a fervent Star Trekker in her youth – once complained to me in disgust that “Klingons fart in air locks!”

As far as the Martians are concerned, I hope for the best. By now, they must be getting used to our antics on their homeland. Perseverance is the fifth rover arriving to explore it. I was hoping two of the rovers would be having a meet-up but no such luck. The lonesome Curiosity has been working hard by itself for the past 9 years on the Gale Crater, but it’s 2,300 miles from the Jezero Crater and too far for either rover to travel. You’d think some helpful locals would step in with a tow truck and a helping hand or other tentacled appendage, but nobody has yet.

Every morning, I scurry to my iPad to see how Perseverance and Ingenuity are doing. So far, they’ve been there 19 sols. (A Martian sol is the equivalent of a 24 hour day on Earth plus 37 minutes.) So far, of all the thousands of images the rover is streaming to NASA’s nearby MRO orbiter to transfer to Earth, I haven’t spotted a single Martian yet. Unless his body is entirely composed of rocks. There are a whole lot of rocks there. Many rocks. And they don’t look especially friendly.

Of course, we can’t expect the natives to look exactly like they did in the cartoons. For one thing, the comic book authors didn’t have access to today’s science. They thought all Martians were green, but they’re not. Martians don’t have access to chlorophyll, and thanks to Kermit the frog, it’s a well-accepted fact that it’s not easy being green. The Martians are, in fact, blue. And shivering. And covered in bluish goose pimples. You may not find facts like these in Wikipedia, but as you well know, you can always count on my impeccable logic to find answers to questions about which you have no interest whatsoever.

Let’s put it this way – it’s chilly on Mars. Mars is 50 percent farther from the sun than Earth is. Both the Jezero and Gale Craters are near the equator and during the summer, the daytime temperatures can be as balmy as 70 degrees F. But every night comes the big freeze down to 180 degrees or so below zero. One electric blanket isn’t going to be enough.

I’m pretty worried about Ingenuity. It’s easy for Perseverance. All the rover has to do is hunker down at night and recharge its solar batteries. But what’s a tiny four pound helicopter to do – shaking all night in those teensy-weensy boots and with its bare-naked propeller blades caked in ice! The very least one of the Martians can do is invite the little guy into their underground home to warm up by a toasty fire. I’m checking it out every morning but, so far, no such hospitality has been extended.

It’s not that the Martians are bashful. They’re probably just confused by these early invaders to their planet. They were expecting some blond white guy – such as Flash Gordon – in his tight jeans and T shirt (spandex wasn’t invented yet) armed with his ineffectual little ray gun. Instead, the creature who shows up has six wheels, a 100 lb. robotic arm for digging holes in the ground, appendages wielding video cameras, microphones, and an array of scary looking scientific instruments of possible torture. Accompanying him is a very intelligent four pound helicopter drone whose objective, assuming it can survive the nightly Arctic blast, is to spy on every pebble, microbe, and creature within a 26 mile radius.

Looking at it that way, I can understand why the Martian citizenry is in hiding. They may be embroiled in heated meetings discussing how to revise their immigration policies in order to prevent all this riff-raff from moving in and taking away their jobs, raping their females, and stealing all their rocks. Or they’re busy making posters that say “Eyrrrcnoooxys, Gz Hmyx!!!” which in Martian, means, “Earthlings, Go Home!!!”

We’re in real trouble if the Martians have access to the internet. Not only will they learn that both Perseverance and Ingenuity are possibly contaminating their neighborhood with the Earth’s Covid virus, but worse yet, they’ll figure out that if they let us in, they may be forced to live on reservations and have to operate gambling casinos just to make ends meet. The Evil Aliens have landed. And they’re us!

I hope NASA/JPL geniuses forgive me for all my fake news about the Martians. I can’t help myself, being the deranged science fiction junkie that I am. Come to think of it, though, NASA is too! I just learned today, that they’ve named the rover’s landing site “The Olivia Butler Site” in honor of the science fiction writer by that name. And Curiosity’s site was named for Ray Bradbury.

I have to confess that I found the landing and installation of the rover to be the most thrilling event that’s happened since we began slogging through these long, bleak, dreary pandemic months. I love everything about it, even – I can’t believe I’m saying this – its price tag ($2.7 billion.) Its value isn’t just in what we’ll learn about Mars and our own planet, but in what such events do to our spirit. We can temporarily forget our bungling, our inhumanity to one another, our own seemingly hopeless ineptitude, and gloriously realize that human beings can also achieve the impossible.

The first 3 rovers – Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity have all completed their mission on Mars. For all we know, they may still be in some stage of “life” but they’ve lost the ability to communicate with Earth. Curiosity is still exploring and sending data back to earth.

Now added to its siblings, Perseverance is at the commencement of its work. It’s a terrifyingly “smart”machine! An engineer described the rover as “being able to walk, talk and chew gum at the same time”. The Perseverance’s assignment is currently planned to be completed in one Mars year which is 668 sols (687 Earth days) but like the other rovers, it will probably continue productive work for years beyond that.

Perseverance took its first drive this week, taking 33 minutes to travel a little over 6 meters (7 yds.) Once it’s fully set loose, it should hot rod it for at least 21 feet per day (kind of similar to normal rush hour traffic in L.A.) During each day’s travel, every inch under, around and over it, will be sniffed, tasted, tested, observed, studied, and the nature of all these ingredients will be reported back to the astro-scientists on Earth. It’ll be slow, but it’ll be going where no robot has gone before!

All five of the rovers were named in essay contests by American school children. Perseverance was named by a 7th grader named Alex Mather from Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. This is what he wrote in his essay:

Curiosity. InSight. Spirit. Opportunity. If you think about it, all of these names of past Mars rovers are qualities we possess as humans. We are always curious, and seek opportunity. We have the spirit and insight to explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond. But, if rovers are to be the qualities of us as a race, we missed the most important thing. Perseverance. We as humans evolved as creatures who could learn to adapt to any situation, no matter how harsh. We are a species of explorers, and we will meet many setbacks on the way to Mars. However, we can persevere. We, not as a nation but as humans, will not give up. The human race will always persevere into the future.

The kid nailed it. Dare to do mighty things, Alex! And please be nice to the Martians. They can’t help being shy. Some Mars Bars might help break the ice!