NASA creates entire playlist to help wake up its sleeping Mars rover

Since there is no sign of NASA’s Opportunity rover, despite the subsiding dust storm on the Red Planet, NASA has made up a playlist to help the rover ‘wake up’.

NASA engineers have created an entire playlist to greet the sleeping Opportunity rover on Mars that has survived the storm but is yet to switch back on after it was sent to a sleeping mode due to no battery source.

As an effort to inspire the rover to wake up from its deep slumber, the staff at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been playing themed wake-up songs in the control room, as per Space.com.

No sign of NASA’s Mars rover despite dust storm subsiding

An engineer at NASA’s JPL, Micheal Staab said, “We’ll just keep playing until she talks to us. It could take weeks — hopefully not months. I wish we had something to share; I wish we had good news. But we keep listening every day.”

The 18 songs long playlist include classics like ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ by Wham!, David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ and ‘Life on Mars’, ‘Here Comes The Sun’ by The Beatles, ‘Rocket Man’ by Elton John and more.

The team is not only playing songs just like that, it is in fact an old trick. As an example, back in April 2004, the Martian rover had to power down and woke up to the tune of Woodie Guthrie’s ‘Riding in my Car’, reported Express.co.

Moreover, the team has not yet informed the time Opportunity rover is most likely to wake up and check in with Earth, but they are optimistic that it will wake up as soon as the solar-powered rover gets enough sunlight to recharge its batteries.