Remember me (and others) urging you to vote for Curiosity as Time’s first robotic person of the year? It’s not going to happen.
I checked the standings this morning. Curiosity currently stands in 16th place, 15th if you ignore the obvious fake campaign to make Kim Jong Un the top vote-getter.
I was going to encourage people to push Curiosity into at least the top 10, but even that looks insurmountable. The rover has just about 101,000 votes. That’s a narrow edge over the 17th-place contender, Korean pop group Psy, but less than a third of the 15th-place contender, female Pakistani blogger Malala Yousafzai.
Even if Curiosity were able to overcome Yousafzai (who, let’s be honest, is very deserving), nine of the top ten contenders have more than a million votes. That’s a lot of ground to make up by midnight tomorrow.
So, Curiosity will not be the first robotic “person” of the year. But, the car-sized rover is still Robot of the year.
Related articles
- Curiosity rover shortlisted for Time’s Person of the Year 2012 (wired.co.uk)
- Curiosity drill issue could threaten mission (msnbc.msn.com)
- Curiosity’s Pollution: Mars Rover Leaves Behind Space Trash(PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)
- Curiosity Rover Finds Organic Signal on Mars, But Not Definitive: NASA (space.com)
- Vote ‘Curiosity’ as TIME Person of the Year (universetoday.com)
