![]() ![]() NASA An artist’s simulation of darkening skies during a Martian dust storm. (Note: This is a false-color image to better show the geography.) NASA For a few weeks in 2005, Opportunity was trapped in a sand dune, unable to move. NASA NASA The dunes of ”Endurance Crater” on Mars. ![]() “The spherules likely to be concretions that formed from accumulation of minerals coming out of solution inside a porous, water-soaked rock,” NASA reports. NASA These small, BB-size particles are evidence that Mars used to have flowing water on its surface. NASA Opportunity’s tracks on the Martian sand. This image taken by the panoramic camera aboard the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the rover’s empty lander, the Challenger Memorial Station, at Meridiani Planum, Mars. Javier Zarracina/VoxĪnd here’s what it saw on its journey, including a very cool glimpse at a Martian solar eclipse. Here’s the map of its journey overlaid on maps of DC and New York - for some perspective. In its time on Mars, Opportunity traveled more than 28 miles, just over a marathon, and roughly the distance between Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland. Those lessons will serve future generations of scientists, and perhaps human explorers. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.Īnd, perhaps most importantly, Spirit and Opportunity taught NASA engineers how to better land and operate rovers on Mars. Here’s Phobos transiting on September 20, 2012. It even spotted the Martian version of a solar eclipse, as the planet’s moons, Deimos and Phobos, traversed the sun. ![]() Opportunity got an amazing perspective of the Martian surface, sending us back many incredible photos of its geology. Spirit found evidence (in the form of chemicals in rocks) that Mars’s atmosphere was once thicker, possibly indicating the planet used to be more hospitable to life. It also discovered the mineral hematite on the surface, another sign the planet had a wetter past. Opportunity (and Spirit) made some stunning discoveries, including the presence of gypsum, which is formed from mineral-rich water and suggests Mars’s surface once had much more water. Opportunity’s “twin,” a rover named Spirit, which also landed in 2004, stopped operating in 2010. And it’s amazing because Opportunity was only designed with a 90-day mission in mind. That’s the longest amount of time any human-built robot has spent exploring another world. Opportunity lasted 14 years in operation on the surface of Mars, thanks to some engineering tricks like driving the rover backward to compensate for a faulty wheel. It can’t survive temperatures more extreme than minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit without electric heaters. “Now, Opportunity’s demise is all but certain, as the rover is about to enter Martian winter,” Grush writes. “We have made every reasonable engineering effort to try to recover Opportunity and have determined that the likelihood of receiving a signal is far too low to continue recovery efforts,” John Callas, the manager of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover project, said in a press statement.Īt The Verge, Loren Grush explains that the dust storm either left too thick a layer of debris on the solar panel or messed up the rover’s internal clock. NASA announced Wednesday that it will not be hearing from the robot ever again. And after the storm cleared, Opportunity - affectionately called “Oppy” - didn’t “wake” back up. The solar-powered rover got trapped in a massive dust storm, which blotted out the sun, its source of energy. ![]() Eight months ago, NASA lost contact with the Opportunity rover on Mars, which had been exploring the planet’s surface since 2004. ![]()
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