Answer: Happy Birthday

On August 6, 2013, NASA’s Curiosity rover sang the loneliest rendition of “Happy Birthday” the universe has ever heard. 208 million miles from the facility it was born in, Curiosity was able to play “Happy Birthday” to itself and a very wide open Martian landscape by vibrating its soil sample analysis unit.

Ordinarily, the unit sounds like a typical robotic component, humming and jostling soil around with various vibration frequencies. When those frequencies are strung together in the right order and for the right duration, however, it can create a tune recognizable to the human ear.

No word yet from NASA on what the next song Curiosity will play for Mars is.