Posted on 02/13/2019 5:29:11 PM PST by buckalfa
NASA's Opportunity rover, the third robotic wanderer to land on Mars, changed our understanding of the Martian landscape, geology, atmosphere and history. On Wednesday, NASA announced its mission complete and with it, the rover's life officially over. The plucky robot roamed the Martian surface for approximately 5,515 Earth days, just over 15 years.
During a press conference, NASA said that Opportunity hadn't responded to a last-ditch effort Tuesday to establish contact. A planet-encircling dust storm cut off communications with Opportunity on June 10, 2018, preventing its solar panels from storing power. Since then, over 830 rescue commands had been beamed to the rover.
On Tuesday night, despite the transmission of commands and Billie Holiday's I'll Be Seeing You to Mars via the Deep Space Network, the rover couldn't be roused.
"I learned this morning that we had not heard back," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said during a press conference.
"It is therefore that I am standing here with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude [and] I declare the opportunity mission as complete," he concluded.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine shared his thoughts on Twitter, as did many emotional space fans.
Opportunity's story is one of resilience, discovery and wonder. It's a record-breaker, a testament to the prowess of the engineers, scientists and leaders at NASA who built, worked on and piloted the rover for over 14 years. Its final resting spot lies on the western edge of the Endeavour crater, in a gully the science team dubbed Perseverance Valley.
The rover launched on July 7, 2003, and landed in Meridiani Planum on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004. Its original mission was intended to last just over three months, but the hardy rover continued to roam across the Martian soil for nearly 15 years, traveling 28.06 miles (around 45 kilometers) -- the farthest distance achieved by any extra-planetary robot.
It was the second of twin rovers sent to the planet in 2003 as part of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission. The first rover, Spirit, became stuck in a sand trap in 2009. NASA officially announced its mission complete in 2011.
Opportunity made several landmark discoveries on Mars, chancing upon the first meteorite found on another planet, revealing that Meridiani Planum was once immersed in water, studying over 100 impact craters and delivering countless stunning panoramas of a planet nearly 34 million miles away.
After landing in 2004, the golf-cart-sized robot began its journey to Endurance crater, spending six months performing an extensive investigation of the bedrock and sand dunes. Opportunity would move on to study the roughly half-mile-wide (730 meters) Victoria crater between 2006 and 2008, revealing how water had entered and left the region billions of years ago.
In 2011, it reached Endeavour, an impact crater 13.7 miles wide, after three years of travel. It discovered a bright mineral vein of gypsum. At the time, Steve Squyres, a principal investigator on the mission, said, "This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock." It also snapped an image of the infamous "dust devils," whirlwinds that occasionally arise on the Martian surface.
I don't think so ...
That is truly funny...
Put that on my headstone.
bumped into the flag pole the appolo astronauts planted
Ping.
I Love this Bar!
I got misty eyed.
Yeah. I'm a geek...
It’s your turn to buy a round
Sheila Jackson Lee wants to know why we can’t have one of the moon rovers stop by and give it a jump start.
Che Cortez,
Set’em Up!
That’ll do, Pig.
Click It!
It is pretty cool. Puts a smile on my face...:)
Rachel from card holder services must work for NASA. Opportunity took the phone off the hook.
Yeah.
But I don't think there's anything in the galaxy that can't get "energized" from Motley Crue's "Kickstart My Heart".. Hehehe. d;^)
.
Great story. The l'il explorer that could..
It launched in 1871? Well, that’s just damn impressive. President Grant must have wanted a space project to bring the country together after the Civil War.
I just sent the article to my one daughter that likes this stuff like I do. We used to follow Opportunity around a bit years ago when she was in grade school, poster boards, etc. And fun to look at the moon and think of the stuff that was left up there, and then to mars to wonder what the rovers were doing up there at the moment.
haha whoops um... scratch a zero off that
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