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.
15 years is FAR longer than they ever expected. Good work, JPL engineers!
Ooooh, I see a SciFi movie in this.
Lost Martian explorer finds rover, dusts it off and
contacts earth...
(tap tap, is this thing on?) Attention people of Earth! This is Varlock The Vicious, Supreme Ruler of The Council Of Mars! We have destroyed your puny probe! Any further attempts to invade our plant will be met with... *Buzz * *Zap;.. Hey, damnit, who cut the lights? I was broadcasting here! By the Piles of Uranus happens every damn time!
Clearly sabotage. The Martians finally had enough and pulled the plug.
Maybe a dust devil will come by and blow the sand off the solar panels.
I believe that is what happened to one of the rovers a few years ago.
Martian junk collector found it
Yep, and when we get there we can fix it.
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 would have sent this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15YgdrhrCM8
We’ll Meet Again
That’s close to the plot of “The Martian”.
Our planetary exploration has been one of our greatest accomplishments.
A triumph of American technology. It was supposed to last three months.
Piles? Uranus? I see what you did there.
Oh well.
It’s just waiting for a dust devil to clean it’s panels
Yep, it ranks right up there with the accomplishments of the Voyagers. Great stuff.
Yeah, the mindblowing thing is that this thing wasn’t expected to last any longer than 90 days.
It lasted over six hundred times that.
:-)
So now we know AAA won’t travel to Mars for a dead battery.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.