Voyager 1 and Opportunity

Breathe deep, mine eyes, the frosty saga of eternal suns.
From unseen depths and dreams undreamt,
I sing the gleaming cantos of unvanquished space.
By thought I embrace the universal,
With wings of mind I sail the infinitude.
Glory! 'tis the stars which beckon man's spirit
and set our souls adrift!

18 billion kilometers from where you are sitting is a spacecraft named Voyager 1. It's been speeding away from you for nearly 30 years, and passed by our gas giants: Jupiter, and Saturn. If you were to send it a message, even at the speed of light, it would take 28 hours for you to hear back from it, it's so far away. And yet every week it checks in, and tells us what it's like out beyond the edge of the solar system.

Meanwhile, on the red planet, Voyager 1's little cousin, Opportunity continues its mission to explore our closest neighbour. Opportunity has lived 12 times longer than was ever expected, and has spent the last 3.5 years driving across the martian surface, inspecting rocks, and looking for signs of life, and sending us status updates. So now they've decided to send the rover into Victoria Crater, a place it will probably never return from. It may not be much, but 50 million miles away from us, our robot emissary is driving across Mars, and that to me, is pretty darn cool.