No Longer Knocking

Scientists at NASA today officially ended the 15-year Opportunity Mars Rover mission, saying that all of their attempts to wake the probe following last summer's planet-wide dust storm have failed. Although Martian skies are now clear enough for sunlight to reach the rover's last known location, it's believed that the storm left a thick enough cover of dust on Oppotunity's solar panels to prevent them from drawing power.

Of course, since the original mission had Opportunity moving about 1,000 yards over 90 days following its first signal on January 24, 2004, it's not like it didn't meet design specs. In the nearly 15 years it was active, the rover traveled 28 miles and sent back more than 200,000 images. It combined with the other rover from the mission, Spirit, to find evidence that Mars had a wet past and could have supported microbial life during that time.

Spirit got a wheel stuck and went to sleep during the Martian winter in 2010. The official end of attempts to contact Opportunity marks the official close to what was called the Mars Exploration Rover mission, which began with the launch of Spirit (officially Mares Exploratory Rover-A) in June of 2003 and then Opportunity's launch the next month. They landed in 2004 on opposite sides of the Martian equator and began their work.

One hopes that, should humanity decide to get off its duff and see what's out there in this universe, someday a spacesuit gauntlet will wipe a couple of solar panels free so that NASA can send a final shutdown command to the little dune buggy and let it officially go to sleep. Thanks to the work of the rover engineers and crew, we'll certainly know where to look.