How sad. Mars rover Opportunity seems to have come to the end of its mission. HERE
Low batteries and a bad dust storm. That was it.
A 3 month mission lasted almost 15 years.
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One of the reasons I love your blog so much are the occasional posts like this.
For a moment I thought that was a headline from Osservatore from about 1965
In Opportunity’s honor, I plan to have a Mars candy bar.
I’ve always been a fan of the Space program, and am pleased to be reminded of such a diligent workhorse. How long did Opportunity’s sister-ship last?
Spirit and Opportunity landed while I was exactly in the middle of engineering school. As they completed their baseline 90 day mission, then their hoped for 90 day extension, and then even the 180 day extension of the extension the plannings were crossing their fingers for, requiring additional funding from Congress to continue further, they were a motivating reminder of why the challenges of an engineering program were worthwhile.
I never dreamed at that time that Spirit would last 7 years, and certainly couldn’t have even guessed that Opportunity would be going for 15 years. Opportunity always seemed to have had a little providential favor, starting with having landed right in the middle of a small crater, exactly the sort of terrain the science team was hoping to study.
XKCD had a comic about Opportunity.
There was another XKCD comic about Opportunity yesterday, presumably as tribute to her official end of mission. I thought it was an odd tribute, looking at a science mission through the lens of the modern social media habit.
However, I suppose in a way it fits very well considering the volume of imagery the Mars Exploration Rovers generated, the importance of that imagery to its mission, and in particular, the way the team regularly communicated what they were doing to the public, using that imagery, in a format similar to a web log or social media site.
In fact, Opportunity landed on Mars less than 2 weeks before Facebook went online.
Oops. Sorry about the malformatted link. I guess I forgot to close my tag.
“My battery is low.”
“It’s getting dark.”
And then there was poor little Spirit.
I think I’m going to cry.