Two Months on, Still no Sign of NASA’s Opportunity Rover on the Mars

Opportunity rover, NASA’s spacecraft which has made a home on the red planet for the last 15 years has gone missing since a huge dust storm hit it in June. Two months later, no contact could be made by the ground staff at the NASA.

The opportunity rover went into an emergency shutdown after the dust storm prevented it from powering itself through its solar panels. The last contact made with the rover was on June 10. Since then, NASA is attempting to send Opportunity a message command three times a week. But so far, it hasn’t pinged back. 

NASA is expecting that the storm will be over by September and the Rover will finally be able to charge itself. “It could take weeks — hopefully not months, this is the first time she has stopped talking to us and not resumed communication when we expected.” One of their ground engineers said. 

On the other side of the Mars, NASA’s another rover Curiosity is working without any glitch and is unaffected by the storm because it produces its power from nuclear energy. So, it doesn’t have to depend on the Sun. Just recently, the Curiosity celebrated its 6th landing anniversary on Mars. It expressed the excitement through a tweet.