Spirit And Opportunity By The Numbers. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechThe historic Opportunity Mars rover mission has come to an end. Opportunity last communicated with Earth on June 10, 2018 after a planet-wide dust storm covered the rover’s solar panels, denying power to the rover.
Opportunity had a twin: the Spirit rover; their mission was to search of answers about the history of water on Mars – and boy did they find some interesting things! This video is a fantastic (and short) retrospective of the Spirit and Opportunity rover missions:
Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 – in quite spectacular fashion!
Spirit and Opportunity were designed for a 90-day mission; Opportunity lasted for over 14 years! I don’t want to say that NASA/JPL engineers OVER-engineered those rovers… let’s say they SUPREMELY engineered them!
I’ve seen an outpouring of tributes to Opportunity on social media using the hashtag #ThanksOppy:
Explore Mars yourself at NASA’s Solar System Exploration website: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/
Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars projected into point perspective. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech