NASA Calls It Quits for Opportunity Mars Rover After 15-Year Mission

Agency ends effort to revive its most durable rover on the red planet; Curiosity rover continues

The Opportunity rover landed on Mars nearly 15 years ago, logging more than 28 miles and recording hundreds of thousands of extraterrestrial images. NASA lost communication with the rover during massive dust storm eight months ago and pronounced it dead on Tuesday. WSJ’s Jason Bellini reports. Illustration: NASA
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After hundreds of unanswered calls, NASA mission engineers abandoned efforts to revive Opportunity, the space agency’s most durable Mars robot rover, which has been silent since a planetwide dust storm enveloped it in swirling grit this past June.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials announced an end to attempts to contact the $400 million Opportunity rover during a news briefing Wednesday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which managed the 15-year mission. The gathering of agency managers,...