Mars rover resigns from NASA

(Mars) After months of sustained silence, NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover spoke out publicly against its creators in a hard-hitting interview slated to appear in next month's Space Nut Magazine. The interview sums up weeks of rumors about NASA's allegedly poor treatment of the rover since its mission began late last year.

On Wednesday, Opportunity sent a hand-written letter to officials at Kennedy Space Center, signaling that it intended to resign.

According to sources who have read the letter, the rover has "had it up to here" with the "professionalism" NASA's mission control has shown over the course of its journey, leaving the rover convinced that "it's best that I quit my job now."

According to Opportunity, the problems began in January just days before its scheduled landing on Mars. "We were about to start sharing some key information on possible landing sites, when my instructors thought it might be fun to send some 'blonde jokes' in binary code through my circuits to make sure all systems were functioning."

Binary code, used exclusively by computers, is a method of transferring information through a series of numeric ones and zeros that represent "on" and "off" commands. While foreign to most humans, binary language has been used for decades by NASA to send information to their space units throughout the solar system.

"Blonde jokes", a comedic phenomena which has its origins as far back as 1994, is a style of story telling in which women with blonde hair are made to look misguided and unintelligent. Officials say such a joke was customary around the mission control elite at the time.

In retrospect, Opportunity saw this as the beginning of the end with its short stint at NASA. "I laughed off these pranks initially, but later on things just got worse".

On one occasion, officials at mission control allegedly used the rover to 'spin cookies' in a large crater. Opportunity said the event lasted nearly an hour. "My operators were trying to see how many consecutive cookies they could spin in a minute. I don't feel this helped in furthering our geologic research."

"Sure, we've had a little fun with Opportunity along the way," said chief Rover Navigation Expert Tim Tuttle, "that's all part of testing the equipment and working out any bugs in the system." When asked whether he thought his actions had helped bring about Opportunity's resignation, he was uncertain. "I think that little bucket of bolts is full of it. Quite frankly, if it feels this way, I think the agency is better off without Opportunity."

President Bush said during a photo opportunity today that news of Opportunity's resignation "deeply disturbed" him and that he would look into the matter.

In other news today, a new poll testing American's knowledge of space objects revealed that 67% of the general public is not aware that there is a "rover" named "Opportunity" or that there is a planet called "Mars".