14 DAY TRIAL // The Curiosity Mars rover has celebrated its first birthday on the planet and, while it was a big event at NASA here on Earth, the rover's nearest neighbor, Opportunity, is halfway around the planet, so it was a rather lonely event on Mars.
It's no wonder Curiosity had to sing Happy Birthday to itself. Granted, even so, it did it for us emotional humans. Curiosity would much rather continue its long trek towards the distant Mount Sharp than indulge in such trivialities as birthdays.
Scientists used the rover's SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) instrument to play the song. The chemical analysis tool is designed to vibrate soil samples to get them to go down into its analysis chamber.
Engineers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center used the various pitches of the vibrations to recreate the song, as you can hear in the video above.