Roughly eight months after it fell silent during a dust storm on the Mars, and just weeks after celebrating its 15th anniversary on the red planet, NASA is finally saying goodbye to the Opportunity rover.
The space agency has made hundreds of attempts to contact the rover since it powered down back in June, when dark skies prevented its solar battery from charging. In a last effort, NASA sent out a final set of commands on Tuesday in hopes that it might finally respond. But once again, their calls were met only with silence. NASA confirmed the news in a press conference Wednesday afternoon, where it officially said goodbye to the long-running mission.
With the death of the Opportunity rover also comes the end of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers program, which launched in July 2003 with the twin robots, Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit met its end back in 2011, a year after getting stuck in the sand and losing contact with Earth.
The Mars rover, known as ‘Oppy,’ far surpassed the expectations of the team that’s operated it for so long. It was designed to last just 90 Martian days, during which it would travel a total of 1,000 meters. But somehow, Oppy survived 14-and-a-half years after touching down on the red planet, pushing its limits to travel almost 30 miles to reshape our understanding of Mars.
It withstood years of extreme temperatures and radiation, but finally met its match this past spring, when a dust storm circled Mars and stopped the sunshine. This proved to be a fatal blow for Opportunity, as the rover relies entirely on solar energy to power its instruments. More than 1,000 recovery commands were sent over the course of eight months in an attempt to contact the rover. But failed!
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