How long did opportunity last

These images gave scientists the information they needed to select promising geological targets to tell part of the story of water in Mars' past. Then, the rovers drove to those locations and beyond to perform close-up scientific investigations.

Landing in a crater, Opportunity scored a "hole in one" by finding the mineral hematite, which typically forms in water. Water is key to life as we know it. Yet, acidic water soaked this area in Mars' ancient past, making conditions harder for life to thrive.

At a place called Comanche, Spirit found rocks ten times richer in key chemicals magnesium and iron carbonates than any other Martian rocks studied before. These rocks formed when Mars was warm and wet had a thicker carbon-dioxide atmosphere and near-neutral-pH water. This warmer, watery environment could have supported life much better than the harshly acidic conditions the rover found elsewhere.

While dragging a wheel, Spirit churned up soil and found 90 percent pure silica at "Home Plate. Perhaps ancient microbes on Mars did as well. Spirit discovered that an ancient volcano erupted at "Home Plate," the rover's final resting place. Together, powerful steam eruptions from heated underground water produced some explosive volcanism.

While violent, these extreme conditions can support microbial life on Earth. Once upon a time, maybe they did on Mars. Near the rim of Endeavor Crater, Opportunity found bright-colored veins of gypsum in the rocks.

These rocks likely formed when water flowed through underground fractures in the rocks, leaving calcium behind. The rovers needed more creative solutions to survive the especially gloomy Martian winters when even less sunlight was available for power. Working in Winter Parking for months on north-facing slopes both saved energy and allowed the dust-caked solar panels to be tilted toward the weak winter sun. With the small boost in power, the rovers could keep working while standing still.

Working While Parked In , for example, Spirit took images to create a high-resolution panorama of her winter haven, resulting in the McMurdo Panorama that you see here.

Engineers on Earth drove the rover from one small hill to another, called "lily pads," always keeping the solar panels tilted toward the sun. That also means more area to get covered in the fine, reddish dust! Engineers expected some dust to accumulate on the panels.

Dust-Covered Solar Panels As the years passed, the rovers appeared to blend in with the landscape as the dust covered them. The amount of energy generated by the dusty panels declined. Dust Swept Away From time to time, whirling columns of air called dust devils swept across and removed dust from the rovers' panels. Both rovers took images of "mini-martian twisters" skidding across the landscape. Weathering Martian Storms Mars is known for large and powerful dust storms that can grow to the size of continents.

The storms bring dark skies, reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the rover's solar panels, draining its batteries. Opportunity was exploring Mars' Perseverance Valley, fittingly, when the fiercest dust storm in decades hit and contact was lost. The storm was so intense that it darkened the sky for months, preventing sunlight from reaching the rover's solar panels. When the sky finally cleared, the rover remained silent, its internal clock possibly so scrambled that it no longer knew when to sleep or wake up to receive commands.

Flight controllers sent more than 1, recovery commands to Opportunity, all in vain. As it became clear the rover was about to be declared dead, Bridenstine said that he was encountering people "a little choked up" but that the general mood was one of celebration. Opportunity was the fifth of eight spacecraft to successfully land on Mars so far, all belonging to NASA.

Only two remain working: the nuclear-powered Curiosity rover, prowling around since , and the recently arrived InSight, which just this week placed a heat-sensing, self-hammering probe on the dusty red surface to burrow deep into the planet like a mole.

Bridenstine said the overriding goal is to search for evidence of past or even present microbial life at Mars and find suitable locations to send astronauts, perhaps in the s.