Author: By Giedrė / Source: Bored Panda
Unfortunately, all good things eventually come to an end, as Nelly Furtado famously declared. Today we say goodbye to one of the biggest leaps in human history. We bid a farewell to NASA’s Opportunity rover, abandoned and alone around 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) away from our planet.
In a series of tweets that have attracted attention, science reporter Jacob Margolis explained what happened and how the mission has come to an end. He first reported the sad prognosis on February 12, when the mission was still officially in progress. However, the grim reality of rover’s condition and the fact that no contact had been established for about 8 months gave no hope and it was unsurprising that on the 13th of February NASA announced that they are giving up efforts to restore communications with the rover and are officially ending the mission after more than 15 years.
On February 13, NASA announced that Mars rover Opportunity’s mission is over, 15 years after its start
Opportunity first started its (her) mission in 2004, as a part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover program, alongside the twin rover Spirit. They had a set of objectives, including searching for rocks and minerals that would hold clues to past water activity. The objectives were mainly tied to trying to figure out if there ever was (or is) life on Mars. Even though neither Spirit (who stopped working back in 2010) nor Opportunity did not detect life, their findings provided important information on the habitability of the environment.
The last update published on Opportunity’s official NASA page states that over 835 recovery commands have been sent to the rover, to no avail. In June of 2018, Opportunity encountered a sand storm that started affecting her, prompting the rover team to develop energy-saving plans for Oppy to try and conserve her energy to wait out the storm in hopes of better conditions. However, despite Opportunity sending a beep confirming she received the…
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