Skip to main content

It's too late to give a farewell, but it's never too late to say goodbye - The Story of Opportunity - Science Feed

By

People say records are meant to be broken, but first, we have to make records then someone else would break it. Isn't it? The Opportunity Rover is that kind of thing we're talkin' bout, the rover that NASA Launched on July 7, 2003, as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover program, which is as planned to last 90-sol duration of activity (slightly more than 90 Earth days). But it gives 14 years of service which is a remarkable achievement. Opportunity landed in Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, three weeks after its twin Spirit (MER-A) touched down on the other side of the planet.
                                           

Opportunity didn't survive for over 14 years because its mission was easy. It encountered challenges that required its engineers to be resourceful. For instance, the rover's right-front wheel sometimes drew more current than the other wheels, so engineers often drove the rover backward to extend the right front wheel's life.
                                           

Opportunity was able to stay operational for 5111 sols after landing, maintaining its power and key systems through continual recharging of its batteries using solar power, and hibernating during events such as dust storms to save power. On April 26, 2005, Opportunity's wheels dug into a soft, wind-sculpted sand ripple and got stuck for several nail-biting weeks at Purgatory Dune. But after extensive testing in a Mars-like sandbox at JPL, the team was able to carefully shimmy out of the Martian sand trap.
                                           

In its record-breaking time on Mars, the rover drove more than 28 miles, finding some of the first definitive signs of past liquid water on the red planet's surface. Opportunity has been a fertile training ground for the many hundreds of engineers and planetary scientists who have learned at their robotic knees. A number have gone on to lead other space missions. Many of those currently operating Opportunity are sharing their expertise part-time with other missions exploring our solar system. For most, working on Spirit (Opportunity's twin) and Opportunity has been transformative.
                                           

Opportunity encountered two mission-threatening dust storms that blocked sunlight from reaching its solar panels. It survived a dust storm in 2007 by minimizing activities and maintaining enough power in its batteries to recover when the skies cleared. Unfortunately, the 2018 dust storm blotted out even more sunlight and kept the skies above Opportunity dark about a month longer.
                                           

At a press conference at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, NASA bid farewell to the rover it placed on Mars on January 25, 2004: before Facebook, before the iPhone, and even before some of the scientists now in charge of it graduated high school.
                                              


NASA is planning to launch another Mars Rover this year, but it seems to be delayed because of a pandemic caused by Coronavirus. We will see what's going to happen very soon until then this is Science Feed saying goodbye to you all.


Read More :
NASA announces to launch a mission on Titan through Dragonfly - Science Feed

How NASA makes 3D visualization of an exploded star - Science Feed

Pandemics Before Coronavirus That Shook The Whole World - Science Feed

Popular posts from this blog

What is Fermi Paradox? - Science Feed

By
Have you ever thought why we have not found any advanced intelligent organism yet? Or is there any other type of life form outside our planet Earth? These are the basic questions that come into mind when we talk about Fermi Paradox. Fermi Paradox Fermi paradox is the lack of compatibility or contradiction between the high chances of existence of extraterrestrial civilization in the universe and lack of evidence to find them or communicate with them. This was termed after the name of physicist Enrico Fermi. It casually came in head of Fermi during talk with his colleagues and he asked, "Where is everybody?". Early and Related Theories Before Fermi Enrico, the founding father of modern rocket science  Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, a  Russian scientist, proposed Zoo hypothesis. In Zoo hypothesis, it is speculated that the extraterrestrial civilization knows about our existence but instead of contacting us, they opt to do observation on us similar to animals in zoo.  The ot
Read more

Evolution of Origin: 21st Century's Bitter Truth

By
By the basic definition evolution is "the process by which new species or populations of living things develop from preexisting forms through successive generations."  And by scientific terms it goes, "species can change over time, that new species come from pre-existing species, and that all species share a common ancestor." Now we read above lines again and find that both of them are basically the same thing while proving to be wrong at the same time. While many naturalists / geologists proposed their theory on the evolution of life only two of them gained massive attention, that is one being Jean Baptiste Lamarck, one of the best-known early evolutionists, and the other being infamous English naturalist that the world known as ‘Darwin”. Lamark first ever published his views in the year1801, later in “Philosophic Zoologique" in the year 1805 and subsequently in year 1809 in his book 'Histoire Naturelle Des Animaux Sans Vertèbres’. His works entails th
Read more

Falcon 9 (SpaceX) - Science Feed

By
Hey, this is Science Feed, and this post is about Falcon 9, one of the most advanced rockets in the world. Before we get started, we request you subscribe to our blog so that you never miss our informative posts. We also recommend you follow us on these social media platforms. Facebook         Twitter          Reddit          Pinterest         Instagram Falcon 9 is the first reusable orbital-class rocket that can be used more than once. SpaceX has designed and developed it for payload transfer to Earth orbit and space. Over the time period of 10 years, Falcon 9 has been launched 85 times, in which 46 launches were able to land. Due to its capability of landing, SpaceX has saved costly parts of the rocket. This rocket uses rocket grade kerosene (RP-1, it is cheaper but less explosion hazardous fuel, which is a highly pure form of kerosene) as its fuel and liquid oxygen as an oxidizer.  In 2007, SpaceX started the development of Falcon 9 which was boosted by the funds provided by NASA. F
Read more