USA TODAY International Edition
Plucky Mars rover dead after 15 years
The scientists and engineers who work with the Mars rovers don’t think of them as robots. They regard them almost like their own children.
So Wednesday brought considerable sadness combined with a fair amount of pride to the folks at NASA, which pronounced the Mars rover Opportunity dead after a record-setting 15-year run. It had stopped communicating more than eight months ago.
On one hand, the robot’s extended mission had been an unqualified success, as Opportunity confirmed water once flowed on Mars and roamed the surface for an unprecedented 28 miles.
On the other hand, no parent wants to leave a child behind, even when knowing ahead of time the separation was inevitable.
Opportunity and its identical twin, Spirit, outlived and outperformed expectations on opposite sides of Mars. The golf-cart-size rovers were designed to operate as geologists for just three months after reaching Mars in January 2004. Spirit was ruled dead in 2011, a year after it got stuck in sand and stopped communicating.
In a news conference at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, project manager John Callas recalled watching the rovers’ development at a room he likened to a neonatal facility.
“During those times when it was just me, you developed a special bond. They’d become your children,” Callas said.
Opportunity had not been heard from since June 10, when a massive dust storm that lasted months blocked the sunlight powering the rover through solar panels. Unable to activate its battery-powered heaters, the robot was susceptible to the bitter Martian cold, which only got more intense in the winter months.