It appears that the mission to revive the NASA Mars Rover Opportunity (also known lovingly as Oppy) has ended.
NASA is holding a media briefing later today to discuss the status of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity at 2 p.m. EST. The briefing will air live on NASA Television, the agency's website and YouTube. Most likely, NASA will announce the end of the mission and divert its resources to other ongoing and planned missions.
We have not heard from Oppy since June 10, 2018, when it hunkered down as a planet-wide dust storm blanketed Mars and blocked out sunlight. NASA engineers have been trying hard since August, when the dust cleared, to make contact and resuscitate it. NASA engineers began transmitting a new set of commands in late January to address several low-likelihood events that could have occurred, preventing Oppy from transmitting.
A final attempt was made last night to contact Opportunity, but it seems that attempt failed as well and the antennas at NASA’s DSN network are no longer tracking Opportunity.
Mars Opportunity
The Mars Opportunity rover landed on Mars 15 years ago on Jan 25, 2004. The primary surface mission for Opportunity was planned to last 92 Earth days. Fourteen and a half years later, it was still exploring the surface of Mars, sending back science data and fantastic images, with an odometer reading at 45.16 km.
It’s buddy rover Spirit was launched in June 2003 and ended its mission in 2010.
See Emily Lakdawalla’s excellent coverage below of the Mars Opportunity mission for more info.
The long winding road ...
A few memories
A Few Cartoons Celebrating Oppy
Fun Facts
Opportunity is 1.5 meters tall, 2.3 meters wide, and 1.6 meters long. It weighs 180 kilograms. It packs a lot of instruments in its small package.
The rover is powered by solar arrays which generate about 140 watts for up to four hours per Martian day (sol). The rover needs about 100W to drive. Two rechargeable lithium ion batteries weighing 7.15 kg each, provide energy when the sun is not shining, especially at night.
For comparison, the Curiosity rover is powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG). The MMRTG is designed to provide 125 W of electrical power at the start of the mission, falling to 100 W after 14 years of service.
Opportunity uses a radiation-hardened 20 MHz RAD6000 CPU with 128 MB of DRAM, 3 MB of EEPROM and 256 MB of flash memory. OS = VxWorks. At night, the rover is heated by eight radioisotope heater units (RHU), which each continuously generate 1 W of thermal energy from the decay of radioisotopes, along with electrical heaters that operate only when necessary.
More info at en.wikipedia.org/...
Farewell
You did well, very well, Oppy. Your legacy will continue with the host of ongoing missions and new ones that will be launched in the next few years. Someday, we will travel the path you created for us.
InSight is making great progress -
Epilogue
It is a testament to human ingenuity and NASA engineers and scientists, that we have a rover exploring a distant planet for over 14.5 years on a mission planned for 90 days, using decades old technology and no humans in its vicinity to lend a hand, to comfort it, to brush off the dust or to even do an oil change.
Let’s have more of such missions and let’s spend our tax dollars on Science, not walls.
Update
The inescapable announcement came at the 2 O’Clock media briefing. The Opportunity mission has officially ended.
So long, and thanks for all the science.
Further Reading
- NASA to Share Results of Effort to Recover Mars Opportunity Rover — www.nasa.gov/…
- Six Things About Opportunity's Recovery Efforts — mars.nasa.gov/…
- mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...
- en.wikipedia.org/...
- Please #WakeUpOppy - www.dailykos.com/…
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Mars Exploration Rovers — www.planetary.org/...