On the 24th of January 2004, the Mars rover Opportunity landed on the planet’s surface. The mission was supposed to last ninety days. It didn’t. Fifteen years later, NASA has finally declared the project complete, and said goodbye to our most experienced Martian explorer.
What is a Rover?
Rovers are large, remotely-controlled vehicles sent to explore Mars and gather scientific data.
- Height: 1.5 metres
- Length: 1.6 metres
- Width: 2.3 metres
- Weight: 185 kilograms
- Top Speed: 0.18 kilometres per hour
- Average Speed: 0.032 kilometres per hour
- Other features
- Six wheels
- Solar panels and batteries
- Heaters
- Three types of camera (one each for taking photographs, navigating and identifying hazards)
- An arm with several scientific instruments built into it, to analyse rock samples
The Mission
Opportunity, nicknamed ‘Oppy’, was the fifth rover to travel to Mars, and the third sent by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Oppy and its twin rover, ‘Spirit’, were launched in 2003 to search the surface of Mars for signs of alien life. This mainly involved looking for evidence of liquid water, since it is so important to life on Earth. The mission was only meant to go for ninety days, because scientists thought that dust would cover the solar panels and cause Oppy to run out of power. Instead, strong winds kept blowing the dust off, meaning the rovers remained operational for years.
Discoveries
Several important discoveries were made by the twin rovers.
- Many different rock types that can only form with liquid water. This shows that Mars once had the same types of environments that support life on Earth.
- The first meteorite to ever be found on another planet.
- Information from over one hundred craters.
- Measurements of Mars’ atmosphere, dust and storms.
The experience gained by NASA as they piloted Oppy for the last fifteen years will also be incredibly useful for future rover missions.
The End
Spirit ran out of electricity in 2010, after getting stuck in sand. This prevented the rover from properly aligning its solar panels, and as a result its battery went flat. Once this happened, the rover’s heaters stopped working, after which it froze and broke. Opportunity kept going for another eight years, until June 2018. That’s when a massive dust storm covered over a quarter of Mars’ surface. The dust was too thick for Oppy’s solar panels to produce electricity, so it was put to sleep. It was supposed to wake up once the storm was over, like it had in similar circumstances in 2007. However, this never happened.
NASA thinks that Opportunity’s clock stopped working, which caused it to waste, and ultimately use up, its power. The last message we received from Oppy was on the 10th of June, which has been widely paraphrased as “my battery is low and it’s getting dark”. In February this year, as the mission was declared over, the manager of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, John Callas, said this: “We tried valiantly over these last eight months to recover the rover, to get some signal from it. We’ve listened every single day with sensitive receivers, and we sent over 1,000 recovery commands. We heard nothing and the time has come to say goodbye.” The last message sent to Opportunity was a song called “I’ll be Seeing You” by Billie Holiday.
What’s Next?
The Mars rover Curiosity, sent in 2011, is still exploring the planet, continuing the work done by Spirit and Oppy.
Future rover missions are also being planned by the USA, Europe and China, while the United Arab Emirates and India are organising other Mars-based programs.
A lot of other ideas are also being considered by countries and companies, including taking humans to Mars, so who knows what could be happening in a few years?
Mission Statistics
- Planned mission time: 90 days
- Actual mission time: 5111 days
- Mission dates: 7 July 2003 – 13 February 2019
- Planned travel distance: 1 kilometre
- Actual travel distance: 45.16 kilometres
- Photos taken: over 217,000
Lachlan Writes Science 