Down to one rover on Mars :(

"facw" (facw) 02/13/2019 at 11:29 • Filed to: Spacelopnik, Opportunity, rovers, Space Car, Mars

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NASA has officially ended their attempts to make contact with the Opportunity rover on Mars. Launched 15 years ago on a 90-day mission to the red planet, Opportunity roved on until last summer when contact was lost amid a massive months-long planet-wide dust storm. It is suspected that either cold damage occurred due to a lack of heater power, or the solar panels became so caked with dust that the rover couldn’t function even after the storm passed.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

With the loss of Opportunity, Curiosity is now our sole functioning rover, though the Mars 2020 rover is expected to launch in summer 2020 , and touch down in February 2021. Curiosity and Mars 2020 are powered radioisotope thermoelectric generators rather than solar panels, so are not vulnerable to dust storms in the way Opportunity was (they do however have finite power sources).

Opportunity reminds us of how bad early 2000s digital camera tech could be in this 2018 composite selfie

Chariotoflove > facw 02/13/2019 at 11:36

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At least we got our moneys worth. 

facw > Chariotoflove 02/13/2019 at 11:40

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Yep, definitely. Spirit and Opportunity can only be considered a massive success, not just for their great longevity operating in an extremely hostile environment , but also for the science they’ve performed. We know so much more about Mars now than we did when they touched down in 2004.  

Chuckles > facw 02/13/2019 at 11:45

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Sounds like a job for Matt Damon.

user314 > facw 02/13/2019 at 11:47

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This was for Spirit, but the sentiment remains:  

facw > Chuckles 02/13/2019 at 11:49

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It my hope that Spirit, Opportunity, Sojourner, the Vikings, etc. can someday be recovered and sent to the Martian Air & Space Museum. That day isn’t likely to be in my lifetime, but I hope they won’t be out there all alone forever.

facw > user314 02/13/2019 at 11:50

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Also, as far as xkcd goes, since we’ve lost contact, we can’t say for sure that it’s not still out there:

 We all remember those famous first words spoken by an astronaut on the surface of Mars: “That’s one small step fo- HOLY SHIT LOOK OUT IT’S GOT SOME KIND OF DRILL! Get back to the ... [unintelligible] ... [signal lost]

Just Jeepin' > facw 02/13/2019 at 11:53

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Rest well, intrepid explorer. 

The Dummy Gummy > Chuckles 02/13/2019 at 11:55

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No way .. Then we’d have to rescue him too.