NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Is Officially Declared Dead2:08 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered  Joe Palca Twitter FacebookNASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Is Officially Declared DeadListen ยท 3:55 3:55 Toggle more options
Enlarge this image NASA's Opportunity rover used its navigation camera to capture this northward view of tracks in May 2010 during its long trek to Mars' Endeavour crater. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption This image is among the first taken by NASA's Opportunity rover after landing on a Martian plain called Meridiani Planum in January 2004. NASA/JPL hide caption "I will attempt no science analysis because it looks like nothing I've ever seen before in my life," rover principal investigator Steven W. Squyres said during a news conference at JPL shortly after landing. "We knew, going into this, at a fine scale the texture of Meridiani Planum was unlike almost anything else on Mars. As we had expected ..." Squyres stopped midsentence to gawk at a new picture of the landing site that had just appeared on a monitor screen. "Holy smokes," he exclaimed. "I'm sorry, I'm just blown away by this." In the weeks, then months, then years following landing, Squyres appeared at numerous news conferences to talk about the rover's scientific discoveries. Asked last summer to share two of his favorites, he said, "OK, I'll give you two. The first was right at the beginning at the landing site." That's when Opportunity found evidence that briny water once sloshed around on the surface of what is now a very dry planet. The second "was years and years later [when] we got to the rim of a very ancient crater," Squyres said. The robot found evidence of what's called hydrothermal events in which hot water percolates through rocks and changes their mineral content. But last summer, the planet that gave up so many of its secrets smothered the rover. Enlarge this image An artist's concept shows a NASA Mars exploration rover on the surface of Mars. The twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity were launched in 2003 and arrived at sites on Mars in January 2004. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption Joe's Big IdeaWaiting For Opportunity To Get In TouchMission managers weren't exactly sure what was wrong with the rover. Opportunity survived a planetwide dust storm in 2007 but this time, with so little power, the rover might not have been able to protect electronic instruments from damage during the cold Martian nights. Instead of waiting for the rover to wake up on its own, managers have spent the past several months pinging Opportunity with commands. But she remained silent and still in Perseverance Valley. On Tuesday, scientists at JPL announced that there would be one final attempt to ping the rover. Keri Bean was among those who helped send that last radio signal. Losing Opportunity, she says, is like a death in the family. Bean was in high school when she saw a documentary about Opportunity called Roving Mars. "I especially remember them showing the landing footage," she says. "And when they got the confirmation the spacecraft landed, they were all cheering, they were so excited. And I was really drawn to the idea of exploring and being so interested and caring about something that much." Bean went to graduate school at Texas A&M University where she worked on the rover as a student and ultimately landed a job at JPL, where she joined the Opportunity mission team. "Me, personally, it's been really hard because this is a project I've worked on for over a third of my life at this point," Bean says. "And so just to lose that all of a sudden is really tough. But at least it was Mars that killed her it wasn't the rover failing or something else. It was Mars. And I feel like that's really the only appropriate death for her at this point." NASA still has one rover operating on Mars. Curiosity landed in 2012 and is currently climbing up Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high mound in the middle of Gale Crater. Curiosity is nuclear-powered, so dust storms don't interfere with its power supply. The space agency plans to send another rover to Mars in 2020.
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