Opportunity Lost

tim-beck (58)in #space • 5 years ago

The Mars Opportunity rover is officially lost—it hasn't answered the many messages sent to it over the last eight months.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity looks back toward part of the west rim of Endeavour Crater that the rover drove along, 2014. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

I'll Be Seeing You

On Tuesday evening, 12 February 2019, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent their final data uplink to the Opportunity rover on Mars. They listened for a reply, but Opportunity remained silent, as it has been since last June when it got engulfed in a global dust storm. A thick layer of dust covered the solar panels and, it seems all hope of contact is lost. Opportunity was declared dead on Wednesday.

853 commands have been sent to Opportunity since the dust storm in the hope that the dust might have been blown off the panels and the rover would wake up. The final message to Opportunity on Tuesday evening carried the Billy Holliday song, I'll Be Seeing You via the Deep Space Network. The final verse of the song:

I'll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I'll be looking at the moon
But I'll be seeing you

Other songs played to Opportunity of the months include Wham!’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. (Here's the Opportunity, Wake Up! Spotify playlist.)

Opportunity leaves its landing site in Eagle Crater on Mars, 2004. Image source

Survivors

Opportunity and its twin sister Spirit landed on Mars on 25 January 2004. There were no Facebook posts about it; there was no Facebook. There were no YouTube videos of the landing; there was no YouTube. Nevertheless, it captured the world's attention and the very first pictures from the Mars surface soon appeared.

Airbag bounce marks from the rovers' landing, 2004. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

The rovers were designed to have a 90-day lifespan on Mars. But there was no holding them back. Spirit only gave up the ghost in 2010, with Opportunity lasting more than 14 years. Opportunity travelled a staggering 45 km, a record for any rover. It also broke the record for the steepest slope climbed on Mars: 32 degrees.

The mission was, by every measure, an overwhelming success. Its mission was to collect data to better understand the planet's geology and history of water.

Rock stripes pattern on the ground, resembles features seen on Earth formed by cycles of freezing and thawing of ground moistened by melting ice or snow, 2018. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Ripples of sand resembling water waves. A portion of Endeavour Crater's eastern rim, nearly 30 km in the distance, is visible over the Meridiani Planum. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

Opportunity recorded this image of a dust devil from its perch high on a ridge, 2016. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Opportunity took this image as it crept into the Endurance Crater, 2004. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

Gone but not forgotten

Opportunity and Spirit's impressive feats have come to an end. Their success led to the development of a new generation of larger rovers, including Curiosity, and the forthcoming Mars 2020 rovers.

And speaking of Curiosity, here's a tweet from the new rover: