NASA Mars Rover DEAD: Heartbreaking moment Opportunity sent back its last ever Mars image

A member of NASA’s Opportunity Rover team has described the “heartbreaking” moment the robot sent back its last ever images of Mars. A massive dust storm which engulfed the surface of Mars has knocked out the Opportunity Rover, which has now been officially declared dead, according to NASA. Dr Tanya Harrison told Sky News: “It was a pretty sombre feeling, so I was on shift for the cameras the week the dust storm hit and our pictures looked fine on the Wednesday of that week. But on the Friday they looked like snow on a TV screen essentially.

“And I got some frantic messages from people asking ‘is the camera working, is it pointed at the sun’, because we were taking pictures of the sun to see how dusty the atmosphere was.

“And I had to say yes the camera’s working fine, we just can’t see the sun.

“That was the really heartbreaking moment, knowing those were the last images we were ever going to get back from the Rover.

“Of course we didn’t know that at the time, but knowing that now is a really heartbreaking feeling.”

NASA has been attempting to re-establish a connection with the remote-controlled robot, which has been up on the planet since 2011.

Originally, it was being used to determine whether the surface of Mars would be able to support microbial life, providing clues as to whether it was once inhabited.

Some 17 missions have landed on Mars to gather information and samples, and NASA is planning another three in the future.

The Opportunity rover has been on Mars’ surface for almost a decade, taking energy from sunlight via built-in solar panels.

The dust storm which recently swept Mars’ atmosphere meant it was unable to absorb sunlight, and as a result has gone offline.

Officials at NASA have issued hundreds of commands from their base in California, but have so far received no reply.

In their latest update for the rover, NASA said: “No signal from Opportunity has been heard since Sol 5111 (June 10, 2018) during the historic global dust storm.

“Opportunity likely experienced a low-power fault, a mission clock fault (the rover has no sense of time) and an up-loss timer fault (loss of contact with Earth causing communication issues).

“The team is continuing to listen for the rover over a broad range of times, frequencies and polarisations using the Deep Space Network (DSN) Radio Science Receiver.

“Since the loss of signal, over 835 recovery commands have been radiated to the rover.”

Steve Squyres, lead scientist for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers says Opportunity deserves an “honourable death” after years of service.

He said: “I thought we might get 6 to 8 months on these things, maybe as much as a year.

“If a spacecraft functions for 15 years and dies in one of the biggest dust storms Mars has seen in decades, that’s an honourable death.”

The rover has more than earned its rest, having clocked 5499 days on what was originally a 90-day mission.

source: express.co.uk