I’ve found the Mars Curiosity Rover landing incredibly inspiring, and decided to build a rover of my own to explore the distant planet we made up for the Numereji 2421 display at BrickCon 2012.

Here’s the first photo returned by Horizon from the surface of Numereji in 2382 — a low-resolution “haz-cam” photo of a nearby feature with interesting, layered characteristics potentially indicative of sedimentary processes (and thus the presence of liquid water). This photo represents the first indication that Numereji might be able to sustain human life.

After traveling at a substantial fraction of the speed of light for several decades, the rover lands safely, but the 14-minute delay for Mars-Earth communication (depending on their relative location) recently experienced by JPL scientists translate to 14 years of terror, as scientists wait to receive data from Numereji 14 light years away.