James Schlarmann 
MARS — The chief tracking officer at NASA is confirming at the time of publication that the Mars rover known as “Curiosity” has likely been taken permanently offline after it was attacked by a massive Martian feline.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit. That’s what I said, alright, man? I said that and then I turned to Billy, and I said, ‘Billy, somebody better wake up the goddamned president,'” Stan Churchill, NASA CTO, briefed reporters this evening. “Know what I’m holding here? An envelope that tells me that organic stuff we found earlier was cat shit. Woulda been nice to now that BEFORE my shift!”
Curiosity may be permanently offline. The craft cost an estimated $2.5 billion, which might have unnerved any other president, but not the current occupant of the White House.
“Two point five bill, huh? Wow, I guess I’m supposed to be impressed,” an obviously sarcastic president asked the media pool this morning as he stepped out for his usual morning hot dog, nacho cheese, coffee, cocaine, and deep fried cocaine run.
“I lose tens and maybe even millions of dollars all the time, baby! It’s called ‘running my business empire.'”
Curiosity had made banner headlines just hours prior to being mauled by the Martian cat when it discovered organic matter on the red planet.
“I stepped out for a chicken taco and a doobie, what do you think I did when I saw the images, man,” a defensive Churchill said.
“Of course I got right on the phone with the president and briefed him, you jag off. Then I called all my superiors, and we started downloading the video recordings from the server. But Billy forgot that he was also downloading season 7 of Frasier to beam out to space as a message to any aliens that like bland comedy that they have friends here on Earth.”
Once the Frasier episodes finish downloading to Billy’s iPod, Stan says there will be enough space on their hard drives to pull up the video of the cat attack on Curiosity.
“Hey man, what’s with the third degree here,” an increasingly combative Mr. Churchill continued.
“I was stationed diligently watching the screens all night and wasn’t out back eating the corn dog I brought for lunch and quietly wishing I had killed myself in ’99 when I had a feeling nothing I wanted in life was ever going to come true.”
Though not much is known at this time about the incident that has taken Curiosity offline, Stan says he knows one thing is certain.
“I definitely couldn’t have done anything to prevent if because I absolutely didn’t see anything approaching the rover,” Churchill said.
“I was totes right there, watching the same goddamned, stupid monitor for the umpteenth millionth hour of my worthless, fuckface life, and not in the bathroom shooting black tar heroin into my taint while I stuffed a Hostess cupcake down my throat, I couldn’t have possibly moved Curiosity out of the way.”
Stan took a breath.
“A 300 foot tall space cat destroyed our multi-billion dollar space rover, fam,” Stan told reporters.
“This is not, and never in the future will it be, the time to consider if, how, when, or who could have stopped this from happening.”
This story is developing.
James‘ satire is found on: The Political Garbage Chute; HuffPost, Alternative Science, Alternative Facts, The Pastiche Post, Satirical Facts, and Modern Liberals.
