How fanfare around Oppy points to a bigger issue

With the recent “death” of  NASA’s mars rover, Opportunity, the social media world has responded with shock and grief. Many people posted on their social media about the rover, calling its death the saddest thing that they had read in a long time.

And while this reaction is somewhat justified for the end of a scientific feat, it does make me wonder about our priorities in regard to the turmoil and tragedy that is happening on our own planet.

The Opportunity rover, with its cute moniker “Oppy,” astounded the international scientific community when it landed on Mars in 2004.

Becoming the second of NASA’s rovers to land successfully on Mars, Oppy was only supposed to be tracking possibilities of water and microbial life on Mars for 90 days, but it far outlived its life expectancy.

It defied not only the odds of how long it would remain operational, but it made important scientific discoveries as well.

By taking photos and sending data, Oppy allowed NASA to discover that there was once water on Mars, and now there is better insight on how life could potentially be supported on Mars.

After it had made significant discoveries, its “death” in June 2018 due to a large dust storm was something justifiably sad.

Opportunity’s last message sent to NASA’s base was roughly translated from code to say, “My batteries are low and it’s getting dark.” This message alone is definitely saddening.

It is an end of an era in terms of science, but something else about this entire news escapade is extremely startling to me.

There are so many people that are extremely upset about NASA’s rover that has been technically dead for almost half a year, but many do not seem concerned about all of the turmoil and tragedy that is happening to living people on our own planet.

For example, the Rohingya crisis, arguably genocide, is still happening. The Muslim minority group is being slaughtered by their own government in Myanmar for the simple fact they are Muslim in a predominantly Buddhist country.

To bring the perspective closer to home, there are more hate groups in the U.S. than ever in recorded history. There are over 1,000 hate groups actively practicing in the U.S. White nationalist groups have increased by nearly 50 percent in the last year, from around 100 to 148 nationally recognized groups.

I would like to understand why we are not paying attention to nor talking more about these things. These are events that we could change if we wanted to tackle them.

Opportunity’s death is definitely tragic in the sense it can no longer gather data and further expand our knowledge of Mars. It will be forever known as one of the most successful missions NASA has ever had pertaining to studying Mars and seeing if it is a viable option for human life.

But on the other hand, there are things happening on our own planet that can be changed and are as tragic as the Opportunity rover.

Yet people seem to be turning the other cheek and most mainstream news outlets like CNN, Fox News and MSNBC tend to focus on things such as the  “death” of NASA’s rover.

There are tangible issues on planet Earth that need to be addressed before we can even consider extending our human society to other planets, much less mourn the death of a rover instead.