NASA Ends Opportunity’s 14-Year Mars Mission After 1,000 Unanswered Commands
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 26
NASA Ends Opportunity’s 14-Year Mars Mission After 1,000 Unanswered Commands
3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 26
Summary
NASA declared Opportunity’s mission complete on 13 February 2019 after the Mars rover stayed silent through more than 1,000 recovery commands following its last contact on 10 June 2018.
A planet-wide dust storm cut sunlight to the solar-powered rover in Perseverance Valley, pushing atmospheric opacity to about 10.5 and leaving it with just 21 watt-hours on its final sol.
Opportunity was built to last 90 Martian days and travel at least 600 metres, but it operated for 5,111 sols and drove 45.16 kilometres as engineers repeatedly worked around wheel, power and terrain problems.
Its final transmission contained telemetry and partial images, not the widely shared line 'My battery is low and it’s getting dark,' which was a later human paraphrase of the data.
The rover’s science helped show early Mars once had liquid water, making Opportunity a foundation for later missions including Curiosity and Perseverance.