After almost 15 years exploring the Red Planet, the Mars One Project has been declared dead by NASA after the Opportunity rover– fondly nicknamed Oppy– failed to respond to a wake-up call after a giant dust storm that ravaged the planet.
It’s been more 8 months since the ground crew has heard anything from Opportunity. The rover had roamed the surface of Mars for more than a decade, using its preprogrammed capabilities to search for any and all information regarding the dusty planet. One of the things it focused on was finding traces of liquid water, which Mars lacked. Scientists spent a long time analyzing data collected by Oppy to form hypotheses and inferences about the Red Planet.
“[Spirit and Opportunity] have made Mars a familiar place,” John Callas of JPL, Opportunity project manager of Mars One, told Space.com last year. “When we say, ‘our world,’ we’re no longer just talking about the Earth. We have to include parts of Mars as well.”
Sadly, the thick, sunlight-blocking dust from the huge dust storm that occurred in June of last year was the probable cause of Oppy’s demise. Its solar-powered batteries were unable to charge due to the dust, forcing Oppy to go into hibernation. Unfortunately for Oppy, this trapped the rover in a dangerous situation as the temperatures dropped in Mars, enough to freeze important components of the robot.
“Opportunity likely experienced a low-power fault, a mission clock fault, and an up-loss timer fault,” mission team members wrote in December, almost half a year since Oppy stopped responding to calls.
On February 13, associate associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen said in a California event, “I declare the Opportunity mission as complete, and with it the Mars Exploration Rover mission complete.”
