NYTimes, SF Chronicle, lots more: Either Spirit, or The Spirit, is stuck in the sands of Mars. Might get going again. Probably won’t.
The last few days a lot of news outlets have buzzed about NASA’s Mars Rover, Spirit, one of her six wheels long lame and all of them now hub deep or deeper in the Columbia Hills that the machine has dutifully explored for five years. Managers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been unable to figure a successful extrication strategy for months now and are making last, desperate attempts. An alternative is to leave Spirit, or the Spirit, as a parked weather station.
We have a tiny usage issue to entertain us today. The Tracker yesterday read in the New York Times the account of the drama by Kenneth Chang. Something kept bumping on my cerebellum until I finally recognized the reason. The reason is the. Maybe it’s long been NYT’s style, but he called the machine The Spirit, and more than once. There also is a the Opportunity. This is of course consistent with style for most machines and their names – it’s the Hubble, the Queen Mary 2, and the Chevy Volt, after all. But since it’s launch NASA and the scientists who work for it under contract have relentlessly anthropomorphized Spirit and her sibling Opportunity, even noting prominently in literature and interviews that these things are regarded as she things. I for one bought it - did a whole long article in Nat’l Geographic in NASA’s machine-friendly preferred style.
Then along comes Chang and The Spirit, as he starts one paragraph.
Other outlets tend to do it without that article. At the San Francisco Chronicle today science editor David Perlman eschews the the for Spirit throughout his account (history and small world – and not terribly relevant – note: Perlman helped break Chang into the news biz some years back when the latter did a summer internship in San Francisco).
Ah well. Good tidings, Spirit, whoever or whatever you are.
Other stories:
- Space.com – Andrea Thompson: NASA to begin escape attempt for Mars rover ;
- Los Angeles Times – John Johnson Jr. (Nov 13): For Mars rover Spirit, it’s do or die ; It might live on as a weather station, he reports. But without ability to maneuver for the best angle to the Sun, dead batteries might make that mode a short-lived one.
- AP – Alicia Change (nov. 12): NASA to try to free stuck Mars rover, Spirit. Ah HA, she writes right in the lede “the Spirit!” An ally for NYTimes’s usage? Not really. Her full sentence goes on “…the Spirit may be willing but…” and then it’s good ol’ Spirit the rest of the way.
Grist for the Mill: JPL NASA Press Release ; Exploration Rover Program;
- Charlie Petit
