Opportunity’s 10 Years on Mars
January 27, 2014
Opportunity, the hardy Mars rover that was expected to operate for just 90 days, has marked its 10th anniversary on the red planet. Even more amazingly, the rover, part of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, is still revealing new information about Mars. NASA launched Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, in 2003 to study the history of water on the red planet. Their 90-day mission, which began in 2004, turned out to be merely a warm-up. Both rovers continued to gather information without any major setbacks for more than five years.
While traversing Mars, the rovers found evidence of ancient hot springs and thermal vents, the first meteorite ever discovered on another world, and rocky spheres created from water-bearing minerals. With Spirit, Opportunity also took the first photos of Earth-like clouds in the Martian sky from the planet’s surface. In early 2009, Spirit became permanently trapped in a bed of loose soil. NASA ended that rover’s mission in 2011. But Opportunity rolled on. The rover has now clocked up about 24 miles (38.7 kilometers) and taken 170,000 photographs.
Opportunity on Mars, in an artist's illustration. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The rover’s latest discoveries involve rocks dated to about 4 million years ago, the oldest ever discovered by the rover. Opportunity’s analysis of the rocks has provided more evidence for than the surface of Mars was once warmer and wetter than scientists had thought. Moreover, the rocks formed in water that was less acidic—and thus, more hospitable to microbial life—than the rocks analyzed previously by the rover.
Additional World Book articles:
- Mars Pathfinder
- Mars Science Laboratory
- Space exploration
- The Search for Water on Mars (a special report)
