News 3 of second quarter//Ariadna Navarro

AFTER 15 YEARS ON MARS, IT'S THE END OF THE ROAD OPPORTUNITY

After one last failed attempt to reach Opportunity February 12, NASA officials announced the end on February 13. Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 for a mission that was supposed to last 90 Martian days but Oportunitty continued for 15 years. 

"The rover team is nostalgic and wistful", says the scientist Fraeman. “It’s like you fall in love with a car you’ve been driving since high school,” she says. “It’s sad to have to let go of that machine.”

While mourning Opportunity’s demise, the team is also celebrating its accomplishments. What was expected to be a quick survey of a small area “turned out to be this overland expedition across another planet, with mountains and valleys and vistas and storms and sand dunes, adventure after adventure stretching on for years,” says mission principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University. “Nobody expected that.”

And the adventure has changed Mars science. “Before [Spirit and Opportunity] landed, the Mars mantra was ‘follow the water,’” Fraeman says. “We’ve moved so far beyond that in terms of the kinds of questions we ask about Mars. That wouldn’t be possible without the information from these guys.”

link: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nasa-mars-opportunity-rover-dead

date: february 13, 2019

scientific scope: astronomy

glossary:

- Spirit: is a robotic rover on Mars, active from 2004 to 2010. It was one of two rovers of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission. It landed successfully on Mars at 04:35 Ground UTC on January 4, 2004, three weeks before its twin, Opportunity.

Commentary:

I feel the sadness of the scientists for the Opportunity's "death" because according to the article, thanks to this rover we know Mars so much better than before the rover wasn't there. I wish the astronomers could find and fix Opportunity or could create another similar rover to keep discovering every day more than the previous. Its sad that a rover that was in Mars since a lot of years can't work anymore but scientists have to try to invent new ones to move along the humanity.