This week, NASA celebrated the one year anniversary of the Mars Curiosity Rover’s landing on the planet. And they did it with a song, played in an alien land, heard by no one. Or was it?

To celebrate one year on Mars, the rover used its onboard soil analysis instrument (SAM) to sing Happy Birthday to itself.

“To make the soil samples go down, we had to program it to vibrate at various frequencies,” says the Curiosity team. To commemorate SAM’s birthday and Curiosity’s birthday on Mars, we decided to play a little song. If there’s anyone listening on Mars, on this special occasion, they’ll hear this…”

And cue the saddest rendition of Happy Birthday ever recorded. Something about this makes me sad for that little guy, all alone on Mars. I’m sure it’s lonely up there.

Planet Earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do…