海角大神

Meet Mars鈥檚 most charming resident: the NASA鈥檚 Rover Curiosity.

How do we know it鈥檚 charming? As the Rover Curiosity touched down on Mars early Monday morning, the Mini Cooper-sized crawler let its Twitter fans around the world follow its descent to the Red Planet with a stream of lively tweets that sought to put a human face on a scientific quest.
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鈥淚'm safely on the surface of Mars,鈥� Curiosity said. 鈥淕ALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!!鈥�
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The 鈥� always stunning in an understated, literally otherworldly kind of way 鈥� are delivered with a smile by the cheery Curiosity.
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鈥淣o photo or it didn't happen? Well lookee here, I'm casting a shadow on the ground in Mars' Gale crater,鈥� it tweeted with this听.

The six-wheeled rover even shed some light on what its human friends were doing back in NASA mission control as it was working hard not to obliterate itself on Mars鈥檚 surface. That is, cracking open jars of goobers.
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鈥淧ass the Peanuts! Everyone's eating peanuts, right?鈥� Curiosity said from millions of miles into space. 鈥淭hey're an [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory] good-luck tradition since Ranger 7 in 1964.鈥�

OK OK, you say, Curiosity isn鈥檛 REALLY tweeting for itself. That falls to a team of three individuals hammering away at several social media accounts just a five minute walk south of NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs mission control in Pasadena, Calif.听
The group has been active since Nov. 2008, when the rover was "WAY cool, nearly built" but "need[ed] a name," in the words of its first tweet.听It's been a non-stop three days for the team, said news and social media manager Veronica McGregor. They've boomed from 150,000 Twitter followers on Saturday to nearly 700,000 on Monday evening.That's in exchange for the group running on a grand total of six hours sleep 鈥� combined.听

But Curiosity isn鈥檛 just a one-dimensional producer of tweets. No, no 鈥� it reads, too. The rover follows a cast of physicists, astronauts ( and Mark Kelly, the husband of former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona) and friends and colleagues at NASA.

But imagine, for a moment, this wanna-be Wall-E taking a break from its Mars roving to catch up with the latest tweets from the eclectic cast of notables whose tweets it follows: music impresario, comic creator Stan Lee, 鈥淪cience Guy鈥� Bill Nye, Twitter founder Biz Stone, former Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton, and, of course,.

(Although Leonard Nimoy has found time to tweet about Gore Vidal and Michael Phelps, he has yet to wish Curiosity long life or prosperity.)
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It鈥檚 not like Curiosity was the first rover to tweet 鈥� its predecessors Spirit and Opportunity (2004) and Phoenix (2008) did, too.
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And Curiosity hasn鈥檛 yet tweeted the sort of world-bending science discovery generated by its earlier cousin Phoenix.
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鈥淎re you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! woot!!! Best day ever!!鈥� gushed Phoenix on Twitter back on June 19, 2008.
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But on one metric, Curiosity has its predecessors beat: followers. Its crop of Twitter subscribers way outnumbers the 160,000 for Spirit and Opportunity and some 210,000 for Phoenix.

And if Curiosity鈥檚 tweets leave you wanting more, the rover鈥檚 real-life NASA driver,, tweets for himself as well.

Via Twitter, the Monitor asked Mr. Maxwell which feed 鈥� his or the rover鈥檚 鈥� was more of a must-have.

He replied: 鈥淒o you have to choose?鈥�
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No, we don鈥檛 鈥� and if Curiosity is any indication, this won鈥檛 be the last highly-engaging mission to Mars.
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Shortly after Curiosity touched down, another Mars mission reminded Twitter that the next trip was coming down the intergalactic pike.
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鈥淎nyone know what the next mission to #Mars will be?,鈥� tweeted early Monday morning. 鈥淪et to launch Nov. 18, 2013.鈥�