Scientists celebrate stunning new Mars findings

Scenes of joy and revelry have been the norm this week at Kennedy Space Center, where NASA scientists are ecstatic over the latest findings of the Mars rover Opportunity.

“It’s taken over seven years and nearly a billion dollars,” pined mission commander Ted Quigley, “and most people thought we’d never be able to do it. But guess what? We sent an r.c. car to Mars and drove it around. And now we can say with 100% accuracy that there’s nothing but red rocks and dust up there! Yeah!”

Not everyone agrees with the success of the project, though. Marcie Dodd of Princeton University’s Physics Department believes attention would have been better paid elsewhere. “What we should have done is sent an r.c. car to Venus. It’s all about Venus. It’s about the same size and shape as Earth, on average it’s closer to Earth than Mars, and it is just as uninhabitable and unlikely to yield anything useful or interesting.”