Off Topic: RIP, Opportunity Rover — you were the best

On January 25, 2004, a machine the size of a golf cart rolled onto the Martian soil and began transmitting information about the red planet. Originally expected to last maybe 90 days, the Mars Opportunity Rover lasted 15 years. With each passing year and with each passing experiment, we learned more and more about Mars — including whether it had water and the potential for any kind of life. Sadly, its mission ended on the February 13, and so many of us feel not just the loss of science, but as if we’ve lost an anchor to another world.

Opportunity was caught half-way down a slope called Perseverance Valley by an all-planet encompassing dust storm last June. Scientists knew about the dust — which was why they felt the mission of Opportunity and its cousin robot, Spirit — would last only 90 days. Once the dust storms kicked up, their solar panels would get covered. Unable to generate power from their panels, they would go dark. What hadn’t been counted on was the Martian winds blowing the dust off the panels and allowing those batteries to recharge. So there was a chance whatever dust accumulated on Opportunity’s panels would be removed by the wind. But with no signals during the windy season, NASA grew increasingly pessimistic. They sent their final commands on January 25. When there was no response, they made the decision to end the mission.

Why are we feeling sad at the end of a piece of machinery? First of all, it’s not unusual for humans to anthropomorphize things. We do it with our pets all the time. How many of us have named our cars or refer to them as “she” or “he”? Second, we kind of got used to it being there and sending us information. Daily experiments — when it wasn’t in sleep mode because of dust — tested for water. Opportunity proved water had once flowed on Mars. It had probably also been present beneath the surface. These two discoveries meant Mars once had a much different climate. If you’ve read any science fiction involving Mars, this was quite a revelation.

Opportunity landed on a large plain called Meridani Planum. Here, the rover found hematite which forms in the presence of water. From this point, the rover went near a large crater called Endurance and found clay minerals and gypsum — elements which, again, form with liquid water. Opportunity also found very old meteorites.

These discoveries increased our excitement. We were learning more and more about a planet roughly the same size as our own. How could we not get attached to this robot? When Opportunity got stuck in a sand dune in 2005, we all waited to see if NASA could free it remotely — and we cheered when they did!

Many of Opportunity’s engineers were in high school when it landed on Mars. They were inspired by this mission to become mission scientists and eventually make their way to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and become part of the team. How many more people were inspired to head into STEM fields because of a rover doing crazy things on a planet we could see at night? We’ve followed along — marveling at the vast amount of data which has come from each day, experiment, and year. Possibly the best thing for those of us who are not scientists are all the photos — over 200,000 photos from Opportunity and Spirit.

What’s next? The amount of data Opportunity and Spirit generated will last scientists for years. The Curiosity rover is still chugging along, mind you. There are orbiters as well, and InSight landed on November 26, 2018 with the intention of drilling into the Martian soil to take the planet’s temperature. It will also measure Martian seismic quakes — we can’t really call them “earthquakes” since they’re happening on Mars. Maybe eventually — when we send the first manned mission to Mars — they can go find both Spirit and Opportunity and retrieve the rovers.

As they sent the final message to Opportunity, NASA played the Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal song “I’ll Be Seeing You” as sung by Billie Holiday. It’s a lovely choice of music and ends with the following:

“I’ll find you
In the morning sun
And when the night is new.
I’ll be looking at the moon,
But I’ll be seeing you.”

If you play Dungeons and Dragons, Warlock Homebrew on Twitter created a stat page and a story to add Opportunity to your campaign. I’m working on a custom campaign for my group and am sorely tempted to add this. For me, the most poignant part of saying goodbye was this cartoon, seen on Reddit:

This is a reference to Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. In this series, Death is personified and talks in all capital letters. The reference is to a little dog named Gaspode who can talk — if he wants to. When Gaspode lays down his life for a friend, Death comes for him telling him he was the best dog. For us, Opportunity was the best rover. We learned so much. It became an extension of ourselves. It was “the rover who could.” We assumed it would go on forever. For all these reasons, we feel a sense of loss.

Rest in peace, Opportunity. You were the best.