There was no call home. Ultimately, the rovers will be remembered for their incredible longevity. Trending Latest Video Free. Paralysed mice walk again after gel is injected into spinal cord COP World agrees to phase-out fossil fuel subsidies and reduce coal Will a scramble to mine metals undermine the clean energy revolution? Steve Squyres, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and head of the Opportunity science mission, made clear during NASA's press conference announcing the rover's death that the agency has no plans to bring the rover back to Earth.
Why would we spend the money bringing material back from Mars when we already know exactly what it's made of? That said, Moersch added, when humans do settle Mars, it's not unreasonable to imagine they might make some effort to recover and preserve Opportunity. Perhaps it could end up in museum, or the region explored by the rover might end up as a national park.
Of course, if humans never get there, Opportunity might not make it into the fossil record at all. It's at least plausible that, given millions of years, a meteor could strike it directly and smash it to bits. This global mosaic of Mars is centered on Valles Marineris, the solar system's largest canyon range.
It extends 4, kilometers and is seven kilometers deep in some places. While this may be the end for Opportunity, the study and exploration of Mars is far from over. The rover Curiosity is still chugging along, as are several Mars orbiters and the InSight lander. The European and Russian space agencies are readying their own Mars rover, recently named Rosalind Franklin after the pioneering x-ray crystallographer.
And many alumni from Spirit and Opportunity are hard at work on the upcoming Mars rover , which will search for signs of past life and cache rock samples for future return to Earth. In the meantime, Opportunity will stand as a monument to science for hundreds of thousands of years—and maybe even a site where future explorers pay tribute. Perhaps in coming decades, humans will touch down in Meridiani Planum, Opportunity's landing area. Some scientists and engineers, including Seibert, have formally suggested the region as a landing site for crewed Mars missions.
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