From Alan Yu, NPR:
One year after Curiosity arrived on the red planet, the team at NASA marked the occasion by having the rover play a song to itself.…
…
Planetary scientist Tanya Harrison worked on Curiosity. She said people might especially identify with rovers, versus other robots like satellites, because rovers have ‘eyes’ and ‘arms.’
“You can think of it as something that is alive in some way and it’s acting as this emissary for us as humans on Mars, since we can’t get there ourselves just yet.”
Read more: All Things Considered: The Whyy – Is NASA’s Curiosity rover lonely on Mars? (NPR)