NASA Fan Mocked Over Glaring Error On Opportunity Mars Rover Tattoo

Those who follow space exploration closely will have been saddened last week by the news that NASA declared an end to the Opportunity Mars rover mission.

The six-wheeled robot has spent 15 years on the Red Planet but was enveloped in a dust storm last June, when it made its last contact with Earth.

To honour the abandoned rover, one NASA fan has decided to immortalise the rover's 'final words' on his flesh. Unfortunately, while there aren't any typos in the message itself, there is a much bigger error with the tattoo...

Any rovers fan (not of the Blackburn variety) will tell you that the tat depicts Curiosity, which is still doing well on Mars - not the deceased Opportunity.

So you could say the tattoo is a missed opportunity.

Obviously it's not exactly a glaring error for the average muggle, who couldn't distinguish Mars from Uranus. But if you're into your Mars explorations enough to get a rover tattoo, then it's a bit of a shocker - like getting Ron and Harry mixed up. Amateur-level stuff.

via GIPHY

The tattoo was shared on Twitter by author Charles Finch, who was quick to clarify that the tattoo wasn't his. Responding to the pic, fellow rover-heads didn't waste any time in pointing out the error.

One person said: "How do we tell him he got the wrong tattoo? I feel bad just looking at it."

Another said: "Uh, you got the rove.... you know what, never mind."

However, another Twitter user defended the tattoo, claiming that it would one day be accurate.

They said: "To everyone saying this person got the rover wrong, they were simply ahead of the curve as one day @MarsCuriosity will also have its batteries run low and it shall drift into its long night."

If you're wondering what the 'my battery is low and it's getting dark' bit is all about, it's basically the last message NASA received from the robot, according to science reporter Jacob Margolis:

Margolis has since clarified that this was a 'poetic translation' of its final transmissions, however, the fabricated final words have already been spread far and wide, on t-shirts and now inked onto flesh.

Hopefully whoever got the tattoo can take some comfort from the knowledge they have joined a long list of people with ballsed-up tats. Just last week, a supersonic tattoo error surfaced on Twitter, with an attempted Gallagher brothers tattoo coming out more like Jimmy Carr and Harry Potter.

Topics: Viral, Fail, Nasa, Community, space, Tattoo

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey