NASA bids farewell to history-making Mars rover 'Opportunity'
Hail to the Queen of Mars
The robot has been missing since the US space agency lost contact during a dust storm in June last year and was declared officially dead Wednesday, ending one of the most fruitful missions in the history of space exploration.
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Dear Oppy
The community of researchers and engineers involved in the program were in mourning over the passing of the rover, known affectionately as Oppy.
(In pic: Shadow of the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity as it traveled farther into Endurance Crater in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars)
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Nostalgia across generations
The program has had an extraordinary record of success: 28.1 miles (45.2 kilometers) traversed, more than the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 moon rover during the 1970s and more than the rover that US astronauts took to the moon on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
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Climbing the crater
Opportunity's twin, Spirit, landed three weeks ahead of it, and was active until it expired in 2010.
The two far exceeded the goals of their
creators: In theory, their missions were supposed to last 90 days.
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Seeking opportunity
Opportunity landed on an immense plain and spent half its life there, traversing flat expanses and once getting stuck in a sand dune for several weeks. It was there, using geological instruments, that it confirmed that liquid water was once present on Mars.
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Curiosity on Mars
In 2021, the recently named Rosalind Franklin robot, part of the European-Russian ExoMars mission, is slated to land on a different part of the planet, raising the population of active rovers to two.
(In pic: A replica of the Mars rovers Opportunity, left, and Curiosity are displayed after a briefing for the Opportunity mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
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