NASA pronounced its Opportunity Mars rover dead today (Feb. 13), over eight months which had been exploring the planet’s surface since 2004 after the sunlight based controlled robot went quiet to a heavy storm on the Red Planet and the day after the last calls to wake Opportunity up went unanswered.
“I declare the Opportunity mission as complete, and with it the Mars Exploration Rover mission complete,” Thomas Zurbuchen , associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said today amid an occasion at the office’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
Opportunity went around the Martian surface for about 10 years and a half, covering in excess of a long distance race of ground and finding convincing proof that the Red Planet facilitated extensive collections of fluid water in the past. The golf-truck size rover and its twin, Spirit, helped bring Mars to Earth.
Cause of the break down :
The reason was system failure precipitated by power loss during a catastrophic, planetwide dust storm that engulfed Opportunity rover last summer.
“It’s going to be very sad to say goodbye,” said John Callas, the mission’s project manager. “But at the same time, we’ve got to remember this has been 15 years of incredible adventure.”
Opportunity got NASA 2 World Records :
Opportunity’s central goal was wanted to last only 90 days, however it worked for 5,000 Martian “sols” (which are around 39 minutes longer than an Earth day) and navigated more than 28 tricky miles -which brings two records for NASA.
Here is what Opportunity Rover saw on it’s journey on the Red Planet. [Click on the images to know more]
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