OBSERVATORY— In what has been hailed as a huge accidental step forward for mankind, the Georgetown Astronomy Club landed an unmanned probe on Mars last night.

Club President John Lamda (SFS ’16) told the Heckler that they “totally hadn’t meant to,” but are “very proud of this scientific endeavor.”

“We had a couple of bucks left over from SAC, so we decided to invest in a nuclear powered warp drive and a 30 rack, just for fun. Before we knew it, we had started ionizing atoms of xenon for energy using [Bradley’s] Natty.”

Club member Christina Hernandez (COL ’18) was “ecstatic” when she heard the news. “Finally, we make some progress. This is why I joined the Astronomy Club. All these other losers want to hang out and party on Friday nights. I want to explore the possibilities of interstellar travel.

“Fermi’s Paradox can suck it.”

The Georgetown community’s reaction has been mixed. “I’m shocked,” Andrew Dewhurst (SFS ’17) told the Heckler. “We have an astronomy club?”

NASA released a statement earlier today stating that the probe, codenamed “Papa Dragon,” broke through Mars’ orbit at approximately 9:00 ET today, and landed on the planet roughly an hour afterwards. “The probe broke the gravitational pull of Earth and was able to travel at 98.4% the speed of light to reach Mars so quickly. The probe also was able to defy scientific notions of relativity and time dilation. We have no idea what those college kids did with such crappy beer.”

At press time the Office of Student Affairs reported that interstellar travel was not technically against the code of conduct but that the students would be punished for sending an extraterrestrial probe outside of the District of Columbia without securing the necessary waivers.

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