Although one wouldn’t imagine a group of scientists specialized in interplanetary probe adventures to be of the jogging sort, NASA’s Opportunity, a probe with wheels exploring Mars for the past eleven years, has just completed a 26.2-mile marathon. This may seem slow to us bipeds, but the Opportunity rover snapped enough pictures for NASA to compose an eight-minute video, which brings us a lovely synopsis of the rover’s run.
THE MARS MARATHON WAS RECORDED
The Opportunity rover began its marathon in January of 2004, finishing this past April. It was by no means a walk in the park, however, as one can surmise from the constant crackling soundtrack, generated by the rover’s accelerometer as vibrations were tracked. Both Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, were expected to run for only 90 days, but, per de rigueur of NASA ingenuity, they both continued to extend their exploratory missions, dauntlessly weathering the worst of Mars’ dust storms, frigid temperatures and other environmental hazards.
CASUALTIES OF MARS
Spirit died in 2009, but Opportunity kept trekking for an additional six years, carrying on the baton of scientific exploration. Opportunity is actually still running, though, exceeding Earthlings’ expectations by 45 times its original life-expectancy.
OPPORTUNITY rover’S GREAT FINDINGS
In its eleven-year tour, the Opportunity rover discovered many indications of the former presence of water on Mars, and even hinted at the possibility that Mars may still be sustaining life. Spirit’s journey ended rather anticlimactically as it fell into a sand trap, but Opportunity carried on despite a bad case of gimpy shoulder and damaged wheel. Tack on top of these physical issues its memory problems: the Opportunity rover no longer uses flash memory, which refused to self-repair despite several earlier attempts. What this has meant is that Opportunity has to relay its data and findings to NASA on Earth every single day or risk losing its data to the dusty horizon. Think Groundhog Day with amnesia.
Opportunity rover project manager John Callas explained that “[f]lash memory is a convenience but not a necessity for the rover…It’s like a refrigerator that way. Without it, you couldn’t save any leftovers. Any food you prepare that day you would have to either eat or throw out. Without using flash memory, Opportunity needs to send home the high-priority data the same day it collects it, and lose any lower-priority data that can’t fit into the transmission.”
So, despite recent space blunders like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket mishap, it should be noted that, even when some things go very wrong, when it comes to space exploration, if things go a little right, they go extraordinarily well. Three cheers for Opportunity!
