NASA’s Mars Opportunity Rover Is Showing No Signs Of Recovery

NASA’s Mars Opportunity rover is showing no signs of recovery even after two months of getting engulfed in a massive dust storm. First detected on May 30, the storm spread to become a planet-wide dust storm within a matter of weeks.

The dust storm had reportedly put the space agency’s Opportunity rover offline with no way to power its solar battery as dust continued to block out the sunlight. The last signal received from the rover was on Sol 5111 (June 10, 2018). A ‘sol’ is a day on Mars that is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds long. The contact with the rover was lost on June 12.

Two weeks ago, NASA revealed that the massive dust storm has finally begun to die down. But, unfortunately, the Opportunity rover is still in its hibernation mode, showing almost no signs of waking up.

Initially, scientists were hopeful that the Mars rover would wake back up when the sky begins to clear in the manner it revived back during the 2007 dust storm when it went into the sleeping mode for a couple of days due to low power levels but was back into action again soon.

But, now, they seem a bit suspicious about the rover coming back to life as it is not responding even after getting sunlight enough to recharge its batteries once again.

“Morale has been a little shaky,” said Michael Staab, an engineer for the program at JPL that helped instate the themed playlist. “This is the first time she [Opportunity] has stopped talking to us and not resumed communication when we expected.”

In fact, the engineers at JPL also tried playing inspirational playlists like “Here Comes The Sun” and “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” to wake the rover back up. But it doesn’t seem as though Opportunity is listening.

The Mars Opportunity rover, which was launched way back in 2004, is currently the longest-serving rover on the Martian landscape. Meanwhile, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover located on the other side of Mars from Opportunity remained unaffected by the dust storm.