We want to apologise to you Earthians.

A friend of ours who used to work in the roadside gem mining tourism business in western North Carolina — where “seeding” buckets with gems is common practice — was responsible for cleaning the scoop on the Mars rover, Curiosity, before it left your planet for the planet of war.

As a practical joke, he “seeded” the scoop on the rover so that when the rover processed the Martian soil, the seeded material would give a hilarious test result for scientists to ponder.

Or so we believe he first said.

Since then, he has retracted his original statement and is seeking psychiatric help in order to avoid jail time which would have been administered by the Inner Solar System Scientific Crime Council in a summary judgement.

We are evaluating other test equipment on board the rover, wondering if the purple haze we see in some images is a result of him covering camera lenses with rubies, sapphires and other gems he collected during his youth.

The Apple computer corporation is cooperating in this investigation.

The U.S. State Department has denied providing consultation to the worker on the ability to backtrack from one’s initial statements and expect to be believed ever again.

More as it develops…