We sent him to Mars, because he was better than anyone on Earth.
After a final attempt to contact their Opportunity Rover on Mars, NASA has officially declared it MIA. The rover had been non-responsive since June last year, when a planet-wide sandstorm kicked up, presumably coating the robot’s solar panels with dust. There were hopes that a storm later that year would clear the panels, but Opportunity remained unresponsive.
From NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen’ morning briefing, titled A Lifetime of Opportunity:
I was there yesterday and I was there with the team as these commands went out into the deep sky. And I learned this morning that we had not heard back and our beloved Opportunity remained silent.
I am standing here with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission as complete. I stand here surrounded by the team and I have to tell you, it’s an emotional time.
Opportunity was initially only planned to be a 3 month mission, due to the same dust storms that ultimately did it in. NASA fully expected the dust to coat Opportunity’s solar panels in that time; what they didn’t expect was that the winds would clear the panels, allowing it to continue on for nearly another 15 years.
Opportunity project manager John Callas did have some insight into why the little rover that could gave up the ghost. Early in the rover’s mission, the heater in its arm wound up stuck on. As an emergency workaround, the technicians would shut everything down at night to conserve energy.
It’s kind of like if the light in your bedroom is stuck on, and you can’t sleep, so what you do is you go outside and turn off the master breaker for your house. But that means your refrigerator starts to warm up. But by the morning time when you wake up and turn the breaker back on, the ice cream hasn’t melted too badly. Imagine doing that for 5,000 nights.
John Callas
That workaround certainly contributed to Opportunity’s longevity. But, it also doomed it.
Because with a loss of power, the clock on the rover gets scrambled, and it wouldn’t know when to deep sleep, so it probably wasn’t sleeping at night when it needed to. And that heater was stuck on, draining away whatever energy the solar arrays were accumulating from the sun to charge those batteries.
So Opportunity may be gone; but it’s far from the last Mars Rover. The nuclear-powered Curiosity is still posting those #MarsSelfies. And another rover will be touching down on Mars in 2020. So, here’s to you, Opportunity; your legacy lives on.
SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY…
Source: Wired
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