NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Is Officially Declared Dead
NASA's six-wheeled rover landed on the red planet in January 2004 for what was billed as a 90-day mission. The plucky robot was still going until a dust storm on Mars last summer killed it.
Opportunity lost.
NASA has officially declared an end to the mission of the six-wheeled rover on Mars. Opportunity lost power in a dust storm last June, and all efforts to make contact have failed.
"Our beloved Opportunity remained silent," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said Wednesday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "With a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude," he added, "I declare the Opportunity mission as complete."
The plucky robot operated on the red planet for more than 14 years — an astonishing achievement, given
