On August 6, 2013, a car-sized robot alone on Mars hummed Happy Birthday to itself to mark one Earth year on the surface. This deep dive tells the biographical story of NASA's Curiosity rover, launched in 2011 with a two-year primary mission and still operating in 2026. It covers the nearly three-meter, 900-kilogram chassis, the multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator fueled by 4.8 kilograms of plutonium-238, the thermocouples that turn decay heat into electricity, and the 60 meters of fluid tubing that keeps the rover's internal organs warm like a warm-blooded animal.

The episode walks through the Earthbound test rovers Maggie and Scarecrow, the sky crane landing that lowered Curiosity on nylon tethers into Gale Crater at Bradbury Landing, and the planetary protection paradox of 20,000 to 40,000 bacterial spores that likely hit ...