From the NASA press release:
Yesterday, Nasa told the world that it’s most successful space voyager ‘Opportunity‘ Mars Rover was dead eight months after it was caught in a gigantic Martian dust storm. The solar-powered rover last communicated with Earth on June 10, 2018 just as a planet-wide dust storm was covering the Red Planet. NASA had launched the twin rovers Opportunity and Spirit in 2003 to explore Martian rocks and soil. Spirit has not been operational for several years but Opportunity persevered.
On Mars Rover Opportunity's final photograph:
Bill Nelson, chief of the Opportunity mission’s engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an interview just after NASA declared the mission over. “This was the last image we ever took. We are looking at an incredibly small amount of sunlight — .002 percent of the normal sunlight that we would expect to see. If you were there, it would be late twilight. Your human eye would still be able to make out some features, but it would be very dark.”
Here is my own poem inspired by the news and the photo from NASA:
Opportunity’s Last Call
One day,
In my ninth grade civics
class
Taught by the coach
In the classroom by the
gym,
There came a knock at the
door.
“Open the door,” Coach
said,
“It might be
opportunity!”
To my young teenage self,
“Opportunity knocks” was
already
Old hat enough
For me to laugh at
Coach’s pun.
The living never cease
To look for opportunity.
It comes in all shades:
great opportunity
poor opportunity
limited opportunity
new opportunity
missed opportunity
last opportunity
“have I got an opportunity for you!”
“have I got an opportunity for you!”
And it always comes with
a promise
Wearing a smile
And raising an
inquisitive brow.
Most live for it.
Some die for it.
On a distant Martian
plain
Opportunity traveled
much longer
Than the experts
predicted.
New Opportunity
Became on-going
Opportunity
Became continued Opportunity
Became old hat
Until that last grainy
transmission
Of off-world twilight
Signaled one more lost
Opportunity.
~ CK
