NASA has declared the Mars rover Opportunity dead after 15 years on the planet, and more than eight months after its final communication with Earth.
The space agency has tried to reconnect more than 1,000 times before finally giving up, having made “every reasonable engineering effort” to recover the longest-lasting lander.
Opportunity has been an icon in the field of planetary exploration, teaching NASA about Mars’ past as a wet, potentially habitable planet, and unveiling Martian landscapes.