With their uncanny, individual personalities and quirks, Spirit and Opportunity helped produce the most experienced Mars rover experts on Earth, and the MER team was as honored and celebrated as the two robot field geologists at the press event Wednesday for the legacies they leave behind.

The MER legacy continues not just in the Curiosity rover, said JPL Director Michael Watkins, but also in the new 2020 rover, now under construction at JPL. “But it turned out the team did something more than that,” he said.

“They energized the public about the spirit of robotic Mars exploration and they brought that to light, these two little intrepid rovers and an incredibly energetic and dedicated ground team,” Watkins continued. “The infectious energy and electricity that this mission created was obvious to the public. That legacy turned out not only a generation of engineers and scientists, of which I am one, but also a generation of students. Many students who were inspired to go into STEM career and a few of them actually came here to work on Opportunity.”

When all good things that must end finally come to that end however, there is no denying the feelings that accompany such finalities. The MER team members, both present and past who were at the event, each of whom bonded with Spirit and Opportunity to one degree or another, in one way or another, wrestled with their emotions, and their good-byes.

“It’s hard at this point,” said Rover Planner Ashley Stroupe, who earned the distinction at JPL as the first woman driver on Mars. “It’s very fresh and I don’t know that I’ll ever have an experience that matches it. What I am feeling is that it’s just been such a privilege to go on this journey with these people and these rovers.”

Gratitude is something that has been present among the members of the MER team since the very beginning, and without doubt, that is one major reason that this mission has been so successful, something written about in the pages of The MER Update on numerous occasions. Squyres even capsulized it in a kind of team mantra or motto: Every day on Mars is a gift. And the team took it seriously, very seriously.

“It’s so hard to know what to say. I feel so emotionally exhausted,” said MER Power team lead Jennifer Herman. “Part of me feels terribly broken-hearted, like there’s been a death in the family. Opportunity was so present in my life. I checked on her every day. I scheduled lunches and meetings and doctor appointments around her downlink schedule. I scheduled vacations and even the birth of my child around the Martian seasons so I could be available when she needed me the most. I have felt an emptiness in the Oppy part of my life for the last eight months and now I know today that it will never go away,” she said.

“But on the other side, I feel so proud and grateful for having had the privilege of being on the MER project for the last 14 years,” Herman continued. “I am proud because we didn’t lose Opportunity because of a broken part or a sequencing error. We lost her because Mars is a harsh, harsh environment. Oppy held out more than 50 times longer than her life expectancy. I am so grateful because I was able to be a part of one of the most amazing collaborations of scientists and engineers that I could ever imagine. We engineers had such profound respect and admiration for our science team and we knew that they respected us engineers too. It has been an honor to work with them all. These have been the most cherished years of my career.”