NASA has just made a long-expected declaration: its long-lived Opportunity rover is dead. This comes following months of trying and failing to contact the rover, which went silent following a planet-sized dust storm that erupted in June, 2018. With the end of the mission, this truly marks the end of an era in Martian exploration.
Launched
way back on July 7, 2003 and landing on January 25, 2004, NASA's twin
Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit was the other) were the second
generation of Mars rover and were designed to have a mission life of
90 days. While this does not seem long, 90 days is a lot longer than
the 7 days of design life expected for the first Martian rover,
Sojourner (1997).
Launched
for the Red Planet in 2003, a time which coincided with the closest
Earth-Mars approach in thousands of years, Opportunity, along
with its twin rover, Spirit, started their journey
through space in the hopes of fulfilling a planetary scientist's
dream of a large, long-lived, roving vehicle that was to serve as a
mobile science platform. In the mission statement, Opportunity
and Spirit were given a 90 day life estimate
during which they would try to confirm the existence of water on
Mars.
That
was at the rovers' arrival in January, 2004.
Their initial mission to look for signs of water on Mars completed within the 90 day time frame, both rovers were still going strong. So, officially living on borrowed time, NASA scientists decided to try and get as much out of the rovers as possible before they too went the way of
Their initial mission to look for signs of water on Mars completed within the 90 day time frame, both rovers were still going strong. So, officially living on borrowed time, NASA scientists decided to try and get as much out of the rovers as possible before they too went the way of
Pathfinder/Sojourner, Viking,
and all the other Mars missions.
Needless to say, the rovers did not disappoint.
The
mission started running into trouble in 2009, which is when Spirit
got stuck. All attempts to free the rover failed and the mission was
altered to be one of a stationary science platform. Unfortunately for
Spirit, it was poorly positioned to harness solar energy in
order to recharge its batteries during the coming Martian winter. The
last communication with Spirit came on March 22, 2010 and the
mission was declared over the following year.
While
its twin was going through its final days, Opportunity kept
right on going, redefining our collective knowledge of the Red Planet
as it went.
Speaking
on Opportunity's unimaginable longevity at the
mission's 10th anniversary, John Callas, project manager
for Opportunity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said that
“these are magnificently designed machines . . . we really have
greatly expanded the exploration envelope by having a vehicle that
can not only last so long but stay in very good health over that
time, such that we can continue exploring."
All
told, Opportunity would travel over 28 miles non Mars,
breaking the interplanetary vehicular travel distance long-held by
the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 (1973). Through all of this,
aside from some software memory issues (which NASA was able to
bypass), the rover remained in remarkably good 'health.'
Then
came the dust storm of 2018.
In
the beginning of June, a local dust storm began, which in and of
itself was not a cause for worry. However, within a few days, the
storm picked up intensity and eventually enveloped the entire planet.
Opportunity was a solar powered rover and depended on the
sunlight to recharge its batteries on a daily basis. With the dust
storm persisting, the rover began to lose its ability to harness
sunlight. The last transmission from the rover came on June 10, at
which point it entered hibernation mode.
NASA
made its first attempts to contact the rover in October, after the
storm subsided. There was no reply and fear was mounting that the
rover had either suffered a catastrophic failure or that its solar
panels were buried under a think blanket of dust. A last ray of hope
was the tendency for the Martian winds to pick up around the end of
2018 and into 2019. These seasonal windy periods had cleaned the
rover's solar panels in years past but, come this trip around the
Sun, they never materialized.
With
hopes fading, NASA made one last attempt to contact the rover on
February 12, 2019. When no reply came, NASA beamed its last
transmission to the rover: the classic Billie Holiday song “I'll be
Seeing You.”
The
mission was declared over the following day.
Remember when . . .
Now,
as space enthusiasts remember the rover, it's still hard to
comprehend that the mission lasted for 15 years. For a trip down
memory lane, consider the following . . .
The
majority of today's high school freshman class was born in 2004
At
the start of 2004, Facebook. Gmail, Skype, Yelp and Firefox didn't
exist
SpaceShipOne
becomes the world's first private spacecraft
A
42” plasma TV costs $4,000
The
majority of digital cameras are 3MP in resolution
The
world's first 1MP camera phone debuts
HDTV,
DVR, satellite radio and Bluetooth are in their infancy
'Blogging'
named new word of the year
iPods
are all the rage
Drones
are first used in the military
PC
maker Gateway closes all its retail stores and IBM sells out to
Lenovo
Electronic
voting machines make their first appearance in the United States
The
hacking group Anonymous is formed
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