NASA announced the end of its Opportunity rover's mission on Wednesday, 15 years after its arrival on Mars.

 

美国宇航局宣布，机遇号火星探测器任务终结，它抵达火星已有15年时间。
 

 

The announcement was made at a press conference at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, following NASA's last attempt to communicate with the rover on Tuesday night which got no response.

 

The rover last communicated with Earth on June 10, 2018, as a planet-wide dust storm blanketed the solar-powered rover's location on Mars. It has not been heard from for eight months since then.

 

Opportunity likely experienced a low-power fault, a mission clock fault and an up-loss timer fault, according to the mission team.

 

Team members have tried to rouse the rover ever since, and radiated more than a thousand commands to restore contact. However, no signal was heard from again.

 

"Saying goodbye is hard, but it comes the time," said John Callas, project manager for Opportunity.

 

"It is because of trailblazing missions such as Opportunity that there will come a day when our brave astronauts walk on the surface of Mars," said NASA Administrator¹ Jim Bridenstine.

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