Mars Rovers
Mars Rovers
[A scatter plot is shown with two labeled axis, each with 5 ticks and ending in an arrow. Two types of Mars rovers are drawn in the top left part, at the top tick and the next highest tick. Each rover type has a label with two names. A third smaller drone is drawn in the lower right part close to the third tick on the Y-axis, with a single name label. It has two arrows pointing up and down to question marks, and two small lines of either side of the rotor blades, indicate movement. Far to the right, about twice the length of the drawn X-axis from the origin of the chart, and at the height of the lowest tick on the Y-axis, is a third type of rover, also with a single name label. The entire chart also has a label:] Mars Rovers Y-Axis: Capabilities X-Axis: Cuteness Curiosity & Perseverance Spirit & Opportunity Ingenuity Sojourner

In this comic, Randall has made a scatter plot displaying 6 different Mars rovers on a cuteness versus capabilities chart. Only three rover pictures are shown in the main plot, as two of the four rovers are near identical to other rovers sent to Mars, and the last rover is displayed off the cuteness chart.
He finds the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers to be very capable / useful, but not very cute. Spirit and Opportunity are cuter than the first two, but less capable.
The recently launched Perseverance rover contains a drone helicopter, Ingenuity , which Randall finds pretty cute, but is unsure how exactly to grade for capability. The error bars make Ingenuity look like it's bobbing up and down, as helicopters sometimes do. It's debatable if a flying drone can be considered a Mars Rover, since a rover is usually something that drives over a surface, but the anticipated flight plan for Ingenuity is to cover some distance (by air) and then land on the ground again.
Finally, on the very right far off the cuteness chart is the Sojourner rover, launched in 1997. He considers this rover extremely cute, but ultimately not that capable. To indicate the extreme cuteness of Sojourner (previously mentioned in 1585: Similarities ), he has drawn it far outside the axis of the plot to indicate it falls off the chart.
In the title text, Randall is disappointed that there aren't many people who have modified their Roomba vacuums to look like (or act like?) the Sojourner rover. Roombas are a recurring theme on xkcd. Search results at the time of posting are mainly reports mentioning the iRobot company, makers of the Roomba line, since one of its founders worked on the Sojourner rover.
The end of the title text, "be the change," is a truncated form of the expression "be the change you want to see in the world"; basically, if there's something you want to see happen, be the one who makes it happen. This implies that Randall will be modifying his Roomba to look/act like Sojourner .
[A scatter plot is shown with two labeled axis, each with 5 ticks and ending in an arrow. Two types of Mars rovers are drawn in the top left part, at the top tick and the next highest tick. Each rover type has a label with two names. A third smaller drone is drawn in the lower right part close to the third tick on the Y-axis, with a single name label. It has two arrows pointing up and down to question marks, and two small lines of either side of the rotor blades, indicate movement. Far to the right, about twice the length of the drawn X-axis from the origin of the chart, and at the height of the lowest tick on the Y-axis, is a third type of rover, also with a single name label. The entire chart also has a label:] Mars Rovers Y-Axis: Capabilities X-Axis: Cuteness Curiosity & Perseverance Spirit & Opportunity Ingenuity Sojourner
