Me Running To The Kitchen Not 0.02 Seconds After I Have Woken Up At 3AM To Get My Well Deserved Glass

This puts a few things into perspective.

I can't wait for those chilly, dark autumn nights where it feels like there's mischief & magic in the air while I sit by a campfire enjoying apple cider with my loved ones.

After 15 years on Mars, it’s the end of the road for Opportunity

After 15 years of exploring Mars, a dust storm led to the demise of NASA’s longest-lived rover.

Opportunity has finally run out of, well, opportunities. After weeks of trying to revive the veteran Mars rover in the wake of a blinding dust storm, NASA has given up on ever hearing from it again.

After one last failed attempt to reach Opportunity February 12, NASA officials announced the end on February 13. “I was there with the team as these commands went out into the deep sky,” Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a news conference at the Jet  Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “I learned this morning that we had not heard back, and our beloved Opportunity remains silent. It is therefore that I am standing here with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission as complete, and with it the Mars Exploration Rover mission as complete.”

Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 for a mission that was supposed to last 90 Martian days. Its twin rover, Spirit, had landed three weeks earlier on the other side of the planet.

Spirit succumbed to a stuck wheel in 2010 (SN: 2/27/10, p. 7). But Opportunity kept going. Over 15 years, the rover found abundant evidence that water once flowed and pooled on the Red Planet’s surface. It also shattered records for planetary exploration and shaped Mars missions for years to come.

But on June 10, 2018 — 5,111 Martian days into its 90-day mission — Opportunity went silent, caught in a massive planetwide dust storm (SN Online: 6/13/18). At first, the rover team hoped Opportunity could ride out the storm and wake up when the skies cleared. But it didn’t.

it feels so good to be kind. it’s the warm feeling you get when you tell someone that they look nice today, or that they did a good job, or that their voice sounds lovely, or that the cookies they baked were delicious, or how you always laugh at their jokes. it’s the warm feeling you get when they respond bashfully, or surprised, with that small smile and a thankfulness that shines in their eyes. it feels so good when someone is kind to you. when it feels like the effort you put into yourself is seen and acknowledged and appreciated. it feels so good when you’re able to make someone feel that wonderful. we should always try and encourage each other.

Why must my feelings be "rational"? Is it not enough to sit quietly in my hawaiian shirt, deranged?

This artist’s concept shows an over-the-shoulder view of Cassini making one of its Grand Finale dives over Saturn | NASA/JPL-Caltech