GOOD NIGHT, OPPY!

A valedictory tip of the hat to the Opportunity rover, an “Interplanetary Detective” that far outlasted its original mission and also found telling evidence of water on Mars.

As has become usual for picture-book tributes to Mars rovers “Oppy” gets anthropomorphic features and feelings as well as feminine pronouns. Nevertheless, strenuous efforts to spare readers any confusion begin on the title page with a cautionary note about “fictionalized” content and finish off with a lengthy afterword that includes actual photos. In between, most of the light but specific informational payload is set apart from the narrative and printed in a different weight type. Having itself been finished off by a dust storm in 2018, Opportunity has since been buried beneath salutes to the currently active Curiosity. Still, as it operated for a record 14 ½ years, it does merit remembrance for longevity as well as a successful mission…and perhaps also for the five weeks it spent stuck in “Purgatory,” a sandy ripple that inspired doubtless frustrated scientists back on Earth to dub all such traps purgatoids henceforth. Slipping in the odd magnifying glass or deerstalker hat, Carter sets the wide-eyed wanderer wheeling over pink but challengingly craggy Mars-scapes. In one of the two scenes set on Earth, Oppy’s human crew includes both brown- and pale-skinned figures, one of the latter in a wheelchair. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A timely addition considering that interest in sending new probes—and people—to the red planet is ramping up.