Mars Lives.

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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/OFWS1Dh6H_4" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/OFWS1Dh6H_4</a>

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Opportunity is in trouble... 

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzkk4z/nasas-opportunity-rover-is-battling-for-its-life-in-an-epic-martian-dust-storm

NASA’s Opportunity Rover Is Battling for Its Life in an Epic Martian Dust Storm
Opportunity has driven farther and lived longer than any interplanetary rover. But can it survive one of the most intense dust storms ever observed on Mars?
Becky Ferreira Jun 13 2018, 3:42pm

NASA’s Opportunity rover, which landed on Mars in 2004, is the endurance champion of interplanetary explorers. Over the past 14 years, it has trundled across some 30 miles of Mars’ equatorial Meridiani Planum region—by far the longest distance traveled on an alien world—and has outlived its planned mission length 56 times over.

But Opportunity is now battling a potentially fatal challenge, in the aptly named Perseverance Valley. For the past few weeks, the rover has become enveloped by a gigantic dust storm. Stretching out over an area the size of North America and Russia combined, it is one of the most intense storms ever observed on Mars, and Opportunity is right in the center of it. (The Curiosity rover is fine and has avoided the worst of the storm.)

“There’s a severe dust storm on Mars that is threatening Opportunity,” John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said in a Wednesday teleconference.

“As a result, the rover has fallen asleep and is waiting out the storm. The project team is very concerned. We’re watching the weather and we’re listening with the Deep Space Network for signals.”

The dust storm from Opportunity’s perspective. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/TAMU

Dust blotted out the Sun from Opportunity’s perspective, forcing the solar-powered Opportunity to hunker down and switch off every energy-sucking instrument except its master clock, Callas said. The rover transmitted its last message on Sunday, telling its operators that it was running on very little power.

“Even though we heard from the rover, the rover was under master sequence control, I made the decision to declare a spacecraft emergency because there wasn’t enough energy to sustain activities,” Callas said.

Opportunity weathered a giant dust storm before, in 2007, but its Mars Exploration Rover (MER) twin, Spirit, wasn’t so fortunate, as it was left with much more dust on its solar panels. After a string of bad luck, including getting stuck in a sand trap, Spirit stopped communicating with NASA, likely because it lacked the energy to ward off cold hardware-wrecking temperatures. NASA declared the rover dead in 2011.

The MER team is cautiously optimistic that Opportunity will escape this fate, and not only because the rover has managed to overcome everything else Mars has thrown at it. Spirit was struggling to keep warm during the dark and cold Martian winter, but when the dust clears for Opportunity, which mission leads expect will be another month or two, it will be summer on Mars. Unlike Spirit, Opportunity has warmer temperatures and more sunlight to aid its recuperation.



“At this point, we’re in a waiting mode,” Callas said. “We’re listening everyday for possible signals from the rover and being prepared to respond to that. We’re concerned but we’re hopeful that the storm will clear and the rover will be able to communicate to us.”

However, there’s a chance that Opportunity has finally met its maker on Mars. It’s too soon to start eulogizing this long-lived Martian explorer, but even so, it’s an opportunity to take a moment to reflect on this rover’s incredible stamina and the insights into our neighbor world it has delivered.

“We’re all pulling for Opportunity,” Jim Watzin, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, said in the teleconference. “As you know it’s been a remarkably resilient rover. I’s longevity has taught us much about operating on the surface of Mars. Regardless of how this turns out, this rover has proven to be an invaluable investment that has greatly increased our ability to explore the red planet.”

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it is a sad day today... 

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a26322768/rip-opportunity-rover/

NASA Says Goodnight to Opportunity, Its Most Enduring Mars Rover
Opportunity colored our modern understanding of the red planet. Now, it's time to say goodbye.

By John Wenz  Feb 13, 2019

It looks like lights out for Opportunity, one of NASA's most successful missions of all time.

The craft, which arrived at the Red Planet in July 2004, has been out of communication since last summer. Many months' worth of attempts to contact the craft failed. Today, NASA is officially saying goodbye to the craft that, for years and years, couldn't be stopped. At 2 p.m. Eastern, the space agency will give a press conference on the rover and is expected to say that the last attempts to reach it have failed.

Opportunity had been roving the surface of Mars for 15 years before the ominous, giant global dust storm that sealed its demise came along. This wasn't the first time a dust storm had made Oppy go silent. But a subsequent "cleaning" event—what NASA calls it when weather conditions clear, exposing the solar panels and allowing the craft to recharge—never happened. (The Curiosity rover, by contrast, uses a plutonium-powered device called a radioisotope thermoelectric generator as a power source.)

Band of Rovers

It may seem hard to believe given NASA's string of successful Mars missions, but the first successful rover didn't deploy until 1997. That's when the Sojourner craft arrived at Mars, roving for 83 Martian days on what was intended to be a seven-day test mission.

NASA followed Sojourner up in 2003 with two crafts—Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit was launched first, leaving Earth in June 2003 and arriving in January 2004. Like its sister craft, Spirit vastly outperformed its intended 90-day mission, returning science for nearly six years before becoming permanently stuck by a rock. (Driving vehicles on other planets is really, really hard when you can't be there in person.)

But even with its sibling gone, Opportunity pressed on. Following its initial landing in 2004, the craft found evidence of past water on Mars, accumulating evidence of a rich, potentially habitable past on Mars. And aside from a few major storms that got in the way, the rover never stopped returning science data. If you could stand on the surface of Mars right now and gave upon Opportunity, you'd find that its instruments were deployed just days before last contact, ready to do science.

While some NASA spacecraft have endured for longer than 15 years, those are orbiter or flyby missions—they're not encountering the sheer number of hazards Opportunity did on the ground. While the Voyager missions pressed on even 42 years after launch, they never had to sweep through a global dust storm or survive hazardous terrain.

So while Opportunity may be gone, it leaves behind an incredible legacy. It's been suggested by some on the team that Curiosity may not ever get the same life span, and Mars 2020 (you can guess when NASA intends to launch it) is a lot like an upgraded Curiosity.

Opportunity's Legacy

We're not done exploring Mars just because this is the end of the line for Opportunity. There are still several orbiters around the planet including MAVEN, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. On the surface, there's Curiosity and the recently arrived Mars InSight, which will dig underground on Mars in search of seismic activity. In fact, InSight just deployed its Mole instrument this week. Mars 2020 and a potential orbiter mission are in the works.

And Oppy's discoveries will guide the future of Martian exploration. Other landers found only patchy evidence of the past life of Mars, but Opportunity unlocked ancient lake beds and truly uncanny evidence for a wet and warm past on the Red Planet. This, in turn, has fueled what we look for on Mars— which is to say, water and clues to if life could ever have arisen on Mars.

For instance, MAVEN is unlocking the history of the atmosphere and why a once-thick atmosphere went away. Curiosity is exploring an ancient lakebed. Odyssey and MRO look for seasonal deposits of water on Mars, while InSight will study underground, looking for potential signs of unexpected heat and seismic activity that could show that Mars is still alive.

So while today may be an official goodbye to Opportunity, it lives on in its legacy that informs our exploration of Mars every day. May we all be so lucky to have such a rich legacy. Goodnight, rover. You've served us better than we could ever have hoped for.

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Send your name to Mars on the next rover...

This will be the third rover with my name on it...   

https://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/mars2020/

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Time is running out... 

https://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/mars2020/