After hundreds of unanswered calls, NASA mission engineers abandoned efforts to revive Opportunity, the space agency's most durable Mars robot rover, which has been silent since a planetwide dust storm enveloped it in swirling grit this past June.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials announced an end to attempts to contact the $400 million Opportunity rover during a news briefing Wednesday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which managed the 15-year mission. The gathering of agency managers, scientists and engineers there became a celebratory wake for the 400-pound robot. Designed for 90 days of operations, it had outlasted computer malfunctions, wind storms and agency budget battles to survive on Mars for more than 14 years.
It lasted longer than any other robot sent from Earth to another planet, agency officials said. Mission engineers made their last attempt to contact it Tuesday night.
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