{"id":18144,"date":"2019-02-14T01:55:49","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T17:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/opportunity-on-mars-2004-2019-nasa-sings-requiem-to-a-rover-and-looks-ahead\/"},"modified":"2019-02-14T01:55:49","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T17:55:49","slug":"opportunity-on-mars-2004-2019-nasa-sings-requiem-to-a-rover-and-looks-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/opportunity-on-mars-2004-2019-nasa-sings-requiem-to-a-rover-and-looks-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Opportunity on Mars, 2004-2019: NASA sings requiem to a rover \u2014 and looks ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Opportunity
Ths colorized image of the Opportunity rover\u2019s shadow was taken on July 26, 2004, by the rover\u2019s front hazard-avoidance camera as it moved farther into Endurance Crater in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After months of silence from Mars, NASA finally read the rites over its Opportunity rover, hailing the six-wheeled machine as an overachiever that found some of the first and best evidence of the Red Planet\u2019s warmer, wetter past.<\/p>\n

The solar-powered rover\u2019s demise was no surprise: It fell out of contact with controllers at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., last June \u2014 due to a globe-girdling Martian dust storm that kept Opportunity from charging its batteries.<\/p>\n

Mission managers tried all sorts of tricks to wake up the comatose rover and re-establish communications, but it was to no avail. The last attempt was made on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s final Opportunity news briefing took on the trappings of a memorial service, featuring far more ceremony than NASA employed when the Spirit rover \u2014 Opportunity\u2019s twin in the Mars Exploration Rover mission \u2014 went dead in 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was there with the team as these commands went out into the deep sky, and I learned this morning that we had not heard back, and our beloved Opportunity remained silent,\u201d said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA\u2019s associate administrator for science. \u201cIt is therefore that I\u2019m standing here, with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude, that I declare the Opportunity mission as complete, and with it, the Mars Exploration Rover mission as complete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both rovers bounced to the Martian surface, wrapped in protective airbags, in January 2004. On opposite sides of the planet, each rover came upon evidence that water once flowed on the Red Planet. Near its landing site in the Meridiani Planum region, Opportunity found \u201cMartian blueberries\u201d containing hematite, a mineral that forms in the presence of water.<\/p>\n