Opportunity bounced to a stop on the Martian surface in 2004 and roamed from crater to crater for 14 years.

A huge dust storm that wrapped around the planet last June covered the rover’s solar panels and left engineers struggling for months to regain contact.

MARS Area of detail below

TEXT MERIDIANI PLANUM Opportunity’s track across Mars Eagle Crater Endurance Crater 2004 Heat shield 2005 Vostok Crater ½ mile Purgatory Dune 2006 Erebus Crater Beagle Crater Cape St. Vincent 2007 Victoria Crater 2008 Cape Agulhas 2009 Cook Islands Porcupine Block Island Grand Bank 2010 Concepción Crater San Antonio Craters Lightning Crater Intrepid Crater Santa Maria Crater Voskhod Crater 2011 Freedom 7 Crater Gemini 5 Crater Crater Cluster Cape York 2012 Matijevic Hill 2013 Sutherland Point Nobbys Head ENDEAVOUR CRATER Botany Bay Solander Point 2014 Murray Ridge Cape Tribulation 2015 Marathon Valley 26.2 miles 2016 2017 END OF MISSION Perseverance Valley 2018–19 Cape Byron ENDEAVOUR CRATER

Record breaker

Opportunity survived 5,111 Martian days and drove over 28 miles — a distance record for wheeled vehicles beyond Earth.

An artist’s impression of Opportunity overlaid on a real image of Endurance Crater.

Dust bound

Opportunity weathered many storms over its 14 years. For example, the red dust that camouflaged the rover in early 2014:

… had mostly blown away two months later:

A self portrait taken on Opportunity’s 5,000th Martian day showed the rover, about the size of a golf cart, glinting in the sunlight.

But the huge storm that hit in June 2018 obscured the sun for days and blanketed the rover with dust and grit.

Exploring Mars

One of Opportunity’s final images shows its robotic arm at work in Perseverance Valley, a week before the storm.

Five months after Opportunity went silent, NASA landed another spacecraft on Mars.

The InSight lander does not rove as Opportunity did, but will instead stand still and probe the inner structure of the planet. Explore Mars and InSight in augmented reality.







Additional production by K.K. Rebecca Lai.