Main image via NASA
After 15 years on Mars, NASA’s Opportunity rover aka Oppy, has ended its mission of exploring the surface of the planed and helping lay the groundwork for NASA’s return to Mars.
Image via NASA
Due to a severe Mars-wide dust storm, Oppy stopped communicating with Earth from its location in June 2018. Thousands of commands to restore contact were made by engineers in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) but to no avail. On Tuesday, 12th February 2019, the team made their last attempt to revive Oppy but unfortunately there was no respond. The rover’s last contact was received on 10th June 2018.
Image via Express
“It is because of trailblazing missions such as Opportunity that there will come a day when out brave astronauts walk on the surface of Mars,” said NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine. “And when that day arrives, some portion of that first footprint will be owned by the men and women of Opportunity, and a little rover that defied the odds and did so much in the name of exploration.”
Oppy was originally designed to last on 90 Martian days and travel 1,000 meters. But the rover beat all those adds by exceeding its life expectancy by 60 times and traveled more than 45 kilometers. Oppy ended its mission at the Mars’ Perseverance Valley.
via GIPHY
“We have made every reasonable engineering effort to try to recover Opportunity and have determined that the likelihood of receiving a signal is far too low to continue recovery efforts,” said manager of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER), John Callas.
If you want to know more about Oppy and its achievements, this Twitter thread explains it all:
According to the thread, Oppy’s final words communicated were heartbreaking. The rover basically said, “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.”
Just like us, everyone on the internet is crying.
Farewell, Oppy. We’ll miss you.
via GIPHY
Info via JPL
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