“I haven’t given up yet,” said Steven W. Squyres, principal investigator for the mission. But he added, “This could be the end. Under the assumption that this is the end, it feels good. I mean that.”
The rover — which outlasted all expectations since its landing on Mars in 2004 and helped find convincing geological signs that water once flowed there — fell silent in June when it was enveloped by a global Martian dust storm. In darkness, the solar panels could not generate enough power to keep Opportunity awake.
To be taken out by one of the most ferocious storms on Mars in decades: “That’s an honorable death,” Squyres said.
NASA is still trying to contact Opportunity, as it has since the dust storm ended last summer.
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The hope was that once the skies cleared, Opportunity’s batteries would recharge and the spacecraft would pop back to life.
Each day, antennas on Earth call out to Opportunity and listen for a response. That will continue through at least the end of January, said John L. Callas, project manager.
Opportunity, and its twin rover, Spirit, both bounced to safe air bag-cocooned landings on opposite sides of Mars in January 2004.
They were designed to last just three months and travel a little more than 1,000 yards each. Instead, they kept going.
The designers of the spacecraft expected dust settling out of the Martian air would pile up on the solar panels, and the rovers would soon fail from lack of power. But unexpectedly, gusts of Martian winds have repeatedly provided helpful “cleaning events” that wiped the panels clean and boosted power back up.
This time, the dust may have been too thick to be blown away or something else broke on the rover. Callas, once optimistic, conceded that hopes were fading. “We’re now in January getting close to the end of the historic dust cleaning season,” he said.
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s science directorate, will be the one to decide when it is time to move on. “Until he tells us to close down the project, we’ll keep going,” Callas said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.