The internet has bid farewell to the NASA Mars Opportunity rover after 15-years of service on Martian soil. This six-wheeled vehicle was built to operate for just three months but kept going for over a decade after it landed on the red planet. Flight controllers tried several times to make contact and sent one final series of recovery commands Tuesday night along with one last wake-up song, Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Unfortunately, there was no response from space, only silence. Read more for another video, additional pictures and information.
The golf cart-sized Opportunity outlived its twin, the Spirit rover, by several years, as the slow-moving vehicles landed on opposite sides of the planet in 2004 for a mission that was meant to only last 90 days. In the very end, Opportunity set endurance and distance records that are years from being broken.
Photo credit: Bored Panda
