CHARACTER
A Rover's Storyby Jasmine Warga

Sophie

Sophie

Quick Facts

  • Role: Daughter of lead scientist Rania and epistolary voice to the rover, Resilience; a human anchor to a mission told largely from a robot’s perspective
  • First appearance: As a sixth-grader entering the rover-naming contest and beginning her letters
  • Age span: From 11 to 33, culminating in a museum reunion with the rover
  • Key relationships: Rania (mother), Resilience (“Res,” confidant), Scott (father), Sitti (grandmother)

Who They Are

More than any other character, Sophie turns a planetary mission into a family story. Her letters begin as complaints from a kid who feels sidelined by a machine that has “stolen” her mother, but they evolve into a bridge between Earth and Mars. Through her voice, the book’s grand exploration becomes intimate, messy, and deeply human, embodying the Theme of Connection and Relationships. She also stands at the crossroads of feeling and reasoning—the child who wonders whether a robot gets lonely and the adult who claims that robot as “ours”—capturing the Theme of Humanity, Emotions, and Logic. Mostly a voice on the page, she is briefly seen in person: when Res first sees her, he notes her resemblance to her mother—“light brown skin and dark hair with pigments of brown and black”—and the story quietly tracks her growth from a gangly sixth-grader to a poised adult.

Personality & Traits

Sophie’s letters are frank, funny, and searching; they map the uneasy space where pride in a parent’s world-changing work rubs against the ache of being left out. Crucially, her playfulness never cancels her seriousness—she can joke about names and still ask if a machine can be lonely.

  • Imaginative and witty: Her contest entry—“Spicy Sparkle Dragon Blast”—injects delight into a hyper-technical environment, signaling how she brings color and humor to the mission’s public face.
  • Emotionally honest: She admits conflicting feelings (“I’m kind of mad at Mom. Even though I’m proud of her, too.”), refusing tidy emotions and showing how love can coexist with resentment.
  • Empathetic and perceptive: She wonders if Res feels lonely in the lab, projecting feelings onto a machine as a way to understand her own—an early act of imaginative empathy that shapes her bond with the rover.
  • Inquisitive and intelligent: Her letters brim with questions; she dives into NASA research and later becomes a science writer, turning curiosity into vocation.
  • Resilient: She weathers absences, adolescence, and her mother’s illness; like her pen pal’s name, her resilience isn’t stoic silence but the ability to feel fully and keep going.

Character Journey

Sophie begins by treating Res as a rival for her mother’s attention, using her letters to vent the small injustices of missed soccer goals and empty dinner chairs. A formative lab visit transforms that rivalry into recognition: the rover becomes a “someone” she can befriend, and the letters shift from gripes to confidences. As adolescence complicates her world—changing friendships, new interests—her correspondence grows into a private workshop for empathy and identity. The crisis of Rania’s illness sparks a leap in maturity. Refusing to “prepare” to lose her mother, she chooses hope with open eyes, and her letters turn raw, sturdy, and clear. By the end, an adult Sophie stands in a museum and welcomes Res “home,” resolving years of ambivalence by claiming the rover as part of her family’s story and, symbolically, part of Earth’s.

Key Relationships

  • Rania: Sophie’s bond with her mother is loving, strained, and ultimately reverent. The mission that steals time also models purpose; illness reveals the cost of that purpose and clarifies Sophie’s admiration. She learns to see not just the mother she misses but the scientist whose work reshapes worlds.
  • Resilience (Res): Res is her silent confidant—the perfect listener who cannot answer back. Sophie’s habit of asking whether he feels lonely teaches her to translate between data and feeling, a skill that matures into her vocation and anchors the book’s emotional core.
  • Scott and Sitti: Her father and grandmother form a warm, steady backline. Scott reframes absence by reminding her that “JPL and NASA are changing the world,” and Sitti’s presence offers comfort and continuity, helping Sophie hold both pride and pain without dropping either.

Defining Moments

Sophie’s growth arrives in small, telling pivots—each letter a step from rivalry to kinship.

  • First letters of resentment: “No offense, but I’m already sick and tired of hearing about you…” Why it matters: Establishes the central tension—love for Mom versus jealousy of the rover—and the candid voice that will carry the narrative.
  • Naming-contest playfulness: “Spicy Sparkle Dragon Blast.” Why it matters: Her whimsy humanizes the mission and signals that the public story of science is also written by kids at kitchen tables.
  • Meeting Res at the lab: The rover becomes tangible, not a competitor but a companion. Why it matters: This encounter flips her perspective and invites her into the mission as a participant, not just a bystander.
  • Letters during Rania’s illness: “I’m choosing to bet on Mom.” Why it matters: A child’s coping strategy becomes an adult’s ethic—choosing hope without denial—and her voice deepens with courage and clarity.
  • Final museum reunion: “You made it home.” Why it matters: She resolves her oldest question by claiming Earth—and her family—as the rover’s home, closing the emotional distance between Mars and the people who waited.

Essential Quotes

No offense, but I’m already sick and tired of hearing about you all the time.

This opening salvo is funny and sharp, but it’s also a boundary-setting declaration from a child who feels replaced. It frames Res as both symbol and scapegoat—an easier target than her beloved, absent mother—and primes the arc from rivalry to relationship.

Sometimes I get mad at you. But the real truth, which is hard to say, is that I’m kind of mad at Mom. Even though I’m proud of her, too. Dad says Mom and everyone else at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA are changing the world. That might be true, but I still would’ve really liked her to watch me score.

Sophie names ambivalence with rare clarity. The contrast between “changing the world” and “watch me score” distills the book’s scale problem: historic achievement versus everyday love. Her honesty makes her growth believable because she never edits out the pain.

Does your brain make it so you can be lonely? Like when Mom goes home, and you are left all by yourself, do you feel lonely? I feel lonely right now.

Projecting loneliness onto Res lets Sophie acknowledge her own. The question bridges circuitry and feeling, turning a robot into a mirror; in doing so, she models the empathy that will define her relationship with both Res and her mother.

I don’t know how you prepare to lose your mom. So I’m refusing to prepare. Because Mom defies the odds, right? Everything she’s done has defied the odds. I’m choosing to bet on Mom.

Hope here is not naïveté but an act of will. By “betting on Mom,” Sophie claims agency in a powerless situation, revealing a resilience that echoes the rover’s name and reframes fear as loyalty.

You’re on your way back to Earth. You’re on your way home. By the way, I’ve decided to answer my own question from a long time ago: Earth is your home. We’re claiming you. You’re ours.

This is closure and adoption at once. Sophie resolves her early anxiety by folding Res into the human circle—family, planet, “ours”—a final synthesis of feeling and reason that turns a machine’s journey into a homecoming.