NASA's long-lived Opportunity Mars rover has been silent since June 11 in the wake of a global dust storm that swept around the red planet, blotting out the sun and preventing the rover's batteries from recharging. Despite clearing skies, the rover has yet to wake up, but it's no longer out of sight.

In an image released Tuesday, Opportunity shows up as a small dot-like feature in a high-resolution image captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing the rover on the slopes of Perseverance Valley 166 miles below. Opportunity was slowly making its way down into the martian valley when the dust storm developed.

Launched in 2003, Opportunity bounced to an airbag-assisted landing in January 2004, kicking off a mission designed to last just three months. But the hardy spacecraft was still on the job 14 years later when it slipped into electronic hibernation after losing power.

NASA's Deep Space Network antennas are listening for any signals from Opportunity indicating an attempt to phone home and are now sending commands "in the blind" in hopes of helping the rover, if it is still able, to reset its internal clock and resume communications. </s> It’s been more than three months since the Opportunity rover went silent on Mars after a massive dust storm engulfed the entire red planet, darkening the Martian skies and rendering the robot unable to charge its solar-powered batteries.

But although NASA hasn’t heard from the 14-year-old robot — endearingly dubbed Oppy — in quite a long time, the space agency still has eyes on the silent rover and has recently managed to capture a new photo of its location on Mars.

Last week, Oppy was spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been orbiting the red planet for 12 years. During the last few months, the MRO has monitored the massive dust storm on Mars while orbiting the planet, waiting for the haze to subside so it could photograph the Martian surface again.

On September 20, the orbiter caught sight of the Opportunity rover on the slopes of Perseverance Valley, where the robot has been stranded since early June. As the Inquisitr previously reported, Oppy was trekking down the valley, located on the western rim of the Endeavour Crater, when the monster dust storm hit Mars in late May.

With the skies finally clearing over the Martian landscape, the MRO was able to snap a photo of the area from a distance of about 166 miles (267 kilometers) above Mars, marking the whereabouts of the still-silent Opportunity rover.

Unveiled by NASA on September 25, the snapshot pinpoints Oppy’s location inside a white square that represents “a 154-foot-wide (47-meter-wide) area centered on the rover,” the space agency noted in the photo release.

“NASA’s Opportunity rover appears as a blip in the center of this square. This image taken by HiRISE, a high-resolution camera onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the dust storm over Perseverance Valley has substantially cleared,” stated NASA officials.

According to the space agency, the rover’s team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has been trying to contact Oppy ever since the Martian dust storm began to abate, in the hopes that the hibernating robot would awaken from its slumber and resume science operations.

Last month, NASA explained that the Opportunity rover would stand a better chance of waking up and recharging its batteries if the sun-blocking dust particles in the Martian atmosphere dropped to a tau level below 2.0, the Inquisitr reported at the time.

On the day the new MRO photo was taken, the orbiter’s MARCI wide-angle camera estimated a tau measurement of about 1.3. This means that about 25 percent of the direct sunlight is now reaching the Martian surface, specified NASA.

“A key unknown is how much dust has fallen on the solar arrays. The HiRISE image shows some reddening of the surrounding area, suggesting dust fallout, but it is not possible to determine how much dust is on the arrays themselves,” explained the space agency. </s> It’s been more than 100 days since a dust storm on Mars caused NASA's Opportunity rover to go dark, but there is new hope after a spacecraft orbiting the red planet spotted the small robot on the surface.

As the global dust storm blocked out sunlight, which is the source of Opportunity's power, the rover went into hibernation on June 11, the last time its team heard from the 14-year-old bot.

Opportunity's team on Earth at NASA have been trying without luck to contact the rover since the dust started to clear earlier this month. Right now, only about 25 percent of the sun's light is reaching the Martian surface, according to NASA.

The mission team has been listening for the rover using NASA's Deep Space Network Radio Science Receiver sending "sweep and beeps."

But there is hope, after HiRISE, a camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, spotted the small robot on the surface. The photo showed Opportunity, or Oppy as it's affectionately called, at the center of an area about 154 feet wide.

What Oppy's supporters were hoping to see is whether the robot's solar panels, or arrays, are clear of Martian dust, enabling them to power the rover again.

"The HiRISE image shows some reddening of the surrounding area, suggesting dust fallout, but it is not possible to determine how much dust is on the arrays themselves," Andrew Good, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote.

With this new image, the first of the rover since the storm, NASA will continue to wait for the dust to clear, continue to send commands to Oppy and wait for more imaging from HiRISE.

Recently, the Opportunity team said it would be increasing the frequency of commands it beams to the rover from multiple times a week to multiple times per day. NASA approved the plan to continue listening for Opportunity until January.

There is concern in the planetary science community the mission will end if Opportunity's team doesn't hear from the rover by the start of the New Year. Supporters have been using #WakeUpOppy on social media to encourage NASA to continue funding the robotic mission.

Opportunity has covered more than 28 miles on Mars during its 14 years on the red planet. </s> An image released by NASA shows the rover Opportunity, represented by a blip inside the white square, on Mars.

NASA got its first look at the Mars Opportunity rover months after it went radio silent following a dust storm.

The agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured an image of the Red Planet featuring a tiny blip identified as Opportunity. NASA released the image of Opportunity on Tuesday.

The rover was spotted on the planet's Perseverance Valley, where it was navigating at the time a dust storm hit the area in May.

The dust storm limited sunlight on the planet, forcing the solar-powered rover to go into a hibernation mode.

Two weeks ago, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory started increasing the frequency of signals to Opportunity in an attempt to wake the rover back up.

"Morale has been a little shaky," Michael Staab, an engineer for the program at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Space.com in August. "This is the first time she [Opportunity] has stopped talking to us and not resumed communication when we expected."

In August, engineers created a playlist of songs and beamed it to Opportunity to get the rover to reawaken.

Opportunity had been roving Mars' landscape since reaching the planet in 2004. </s> After three months of radio silence, NASA’s Opportunity rover has emerged from a massive Martian dust storm, still silent but at least now visible.

The resilient rover has been photographed by NASA’s Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on the Red Planet’s Perseverance Valley where a global storm cut off its solar power, putting it in hibernation mode. NASA has consequently not received a single signal from it since June 10, despite increasing daily attempts to communicate, the space agency said on Tuesday.

“A key unknown is how much dust has fallen on the solar arrays,” NASA said in a release posted on the website for the University of Arizona in Tucson, which operates MRO’s HiRISE camera. “As the dusty sky continues to clear, the frequent commanding will continue and imaging will be repeated.”

An animated image released by NASA and seen here shows the amount of dust covering the rover’s location today compared to one Martian year ago, which is 687 Earth days.

“Aside from the rover (only in the new image), the color and albedo patterns are very similar, so an optically thick layer of dust has not been deposited over the region,” the agency said.

The storm had been described as the most intense ever observed on Mars, with it at one point covering more than 15.8 million square miles, or roughly the area of North America and Russia combined, NASA said in June.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, seen in 2014, has gone into hibernation mode after a global dust storm blocked its solar panels, NASA said.

The rover has operated well beyond its expected longevity on the Red Planet.

NASA will continue its listen for signals from the 14-year-old rover at least into early 2019, CNET reported.

Opportunity has been exploring Mars since 2004, despite it only expected to operate for 90 Martian days. Its twin rover, Spirit, also landed on Mars in 2004 but ceased operations after 2,210 Martian days, according to NASA.

Opportunity’s main mission is to assess the planet’s geology and past habitability at two Martian sites where there is preserved evidence of past and persistent water.

Should Opportunity wake up from its hibernation, it could take several weeks or communication sessions before engineers receive enough information to determine the next course of action, NASA said. The agency compared the rover’s wakeup to coming out of a coma, stating, “It takes time to fully recover.”

The rover’s team will then do a scan of its battery, solar cells, temperature and will attempt to review the amount of dust that may have become caked inside of it. </s> NASA scientists can now see Opportunity — their solar-powered probe that was lost in a Martian dust storm more than 100 days ago — but the vintage robot hasn't shown any signs of life.

Thanks to a high-resolution camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA said Tuesday it can see the Opportunity rover in Perseverance Valley, on the edge of a huge crater.

Opportunity was descending into the valley when a dust storm that was first detected 30 May swept over the region. In NASA's image, the vehicle appears as a tiny white dot.

The 15-year-old rover was last heard from on June 10, when it went into "sleep" mode as dust blocked out the Sun and darkness enveloped the Red Planet.

"NASA still hasn't heard from the Opportunity rover, but at least we can see it again," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.

Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, are a pair of unmanned robotic vehicles designed by NASA to tool around on the Martian surface and transmit data about conditions there back to Earth.

They landed on Mars in 2003 on a mission meant to last 90 days and span 1,000 yards (meters).

Spirit lasted 20 times longer than that. It became stuck in soft soil in 2009, and its mission was formally declared over in 2011.

Opportunity is going on 60 times its planned mission life, has traveled 28 miles (45 kilometers) and found evidence of water on Mars and conditions that may have been suitable for sustaining microbial life.

Last month, NASA said it would work until mid-October to try to bring Opportunity back to life, a timeframe fans of "Oppy" said was too short. </s> A massive dust storm on Mars has forced NASA to temporarily suspend operations of its Opportunity rover.

NASA first caught wind of the dust storm when its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected traces of the emerging weather system on June 1. Within a few days, the storm exploded in size, and it now covers an area measuring 7 million square miles (18 million square kilometers), which is larger than North America. NASA’s Opportunity rover is currently within the affected region, prompting mission controllers to suspend normal operations as the rover waits out the storm.

The situation is actually quite perilous. The dust storm (not to be confused with a sandstorm) is raising atmospheric opacity, or “tau,” blocking out light from the Sun, so it’s much darker at the surface than usual. On June 7, the rover’s power levels dropped appreciably. Opportunity uses solar panels to recharge its batteries, so NASA had little choice but to put the rover into a kind of hibernation mode to preserve energy. NASA is having to manage a delicate balance, making sure the rover doesn’t run out of energy while maintaining its power-hungry survival heaters—a system that protects the rover’s batteries from freezing in the extreme cold.

“It’s not unlike running a car in the winter so that the cold doesn’t sap its battery charge,” NASA writes in a release. “There is a risk to the rover if the storm persists for too long and Opportunity gets too cold while waiting for the skies to clear.”

This isn’t the first time Opportunity has dealt with dust storm since it arrived on Mars in January 2004. In 2007, the rover rode out a similar storm that lasted for two weeks. Like now, the rover was put into a hibernation mode, and it managed to survive the ordeal. The same could not be said for Opportunity’s companion probe, Mars Spirit, which failed completely after a dust storm in 2008.

The current dust storm seems to be worse than the one in 2007 in terms of dimming. The 2007 storm produced a tau value of 5.5, while the current storm has already produced a tau of 10.8. The good news is that Opportunity seems to be okay so far. The probe sent a hello message to NASA engineers yesterday morning—an encouraging sign given the storm’s increasing intensity. NASA will carefully monitor Opportunity’s power levels as the storm continues.

The temperature in Perseverance Valley, the rover’s current location, is around -20 degrees F (-29 degrees C). Counterintuitively, dust storms may limit the extreme temperature swings experienced on Mars. The swirling dust absorbs heat, raising the temperature at the surface.

Dust storms are infrequent on Mars, but they do arise from time to time. These systems often emerge without warning and escalate quickly, lasting anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. During summer in the south, the Sun warms dust particles, causing them to rise up higher into the sky. This produces more wind, which kicks up even more dust, creating a feedback loop.

In case you’re wondering, NASA’s Curiosity rover is nowhere near Opportunity and is not currently threatened by the dust storm. The two probes are about 5,000 miles (8,200 km) apart and on practically opposite sides of the planet. It’s lonely on Mars, but as this storm menaces Opportunity, the Red Planet suddenly seems even lonelier. </s> • NASA’s Opportunity rover hasn’t phoned home in the months after a global dust storm tore across Mars.
• Officials at NASA are expected to announce the Martian robot’s presumed death on Wednesday.
• Now that both Opportunity and its identical-twin rover, Spirit, are silent, the longest-running Mars mission is history is over.
• Opportunity was supposed to last 90 days but survived on the red planet for nearly 15 years.

The longest-operating robot on the Martian surface has finally met its demise.

NASA has tried for months to contact its Opportunity rover on Mars, but the golf-cart-size robot has failed to phone home to Earth ever since a record global dust storm engulfed the red planet.

On Wednesday, the US space agency is expected to announce the end of Opportunity. Combined with the previous loss of its identical-twin Spirit rover, this signals the operational finale of the Mars Exploration Rovers program – the longest-running Mars mission in history.

Opportunity and Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004. Each robot was designed to last about 90 days on the Martian surface, but Spirit survived for more than six years and Opportunity for nearly 15 years. The latter rolled about a marathon’s worth of miles across the red planet’s surface.

Opportunity was last heard from in June, when regional dust storms began to tear across Mars.

“This is the worst storm Opportunity has ever seen, and we’re doing what we can, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best,” Steve Squyres, a planetary scientist at Cornell University and leader of the rover mission, told the Planetary Society at the time.

Though Opportunity had weathered other Martian dust storms before, this particular tempest – which NASA called “one of the most intense” ever seen – blocked a record amount sunlight to the planet’s surface for an extended stretch of time.

It appears this was too much for the aging rover, which relies on solar energy to keep its electronics healthy.

The dust storm on Mars began to clear in late August.

With sunlight intensity growing, mission managers said at the time that Opportunity’s solar panels should (in theory) begin gathering enough sunlight to recharge the rover’s batteries. This prompted the team to begin attempts to contact the robot.

“If we do not hear back after 45 days, the team will be forced to conclude that the sun-blocking dust and the Martian cold have conspired to cause some type of fault from which the rover will more than likely not recover,” John Callas, the rover’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said on August 30.

That deadline passed in October, marking the end of an “active” campaign to contact Opportunity.

But the space agency did not immediately give up. In November, NASA started a 90-day effort of “passive” listening to see if the robot somehow woke up on its own.

Opportunity still did not respond, even as light intensity increased on the sun-facing hill where engineers had parked the rover before the storm.

Too much fine Martian dust likely coated Opportunity’s panels, and no winds came soon enough to sweep it off. This probably impaired the rover’s ability to store and use electrical energy.

Cold is a major threat on Mars, since temperatures can drop to -100 degrees Fahrenheit near the equator in the winter. Such cold can shrink bits of metal in electronic circuits and snap them.

While little buttons of nuclear material called plutonium-238 help keep Opportunity’s circuitry warm, they are well-decayed and not as hot as they used to be – and unable to protect the rover’s systems on their own.

Read more: NASA’s deep-space nuclear-power crisis may soon end, thanks to a clever new robot in Tennessee

Opportunity’s batteries were also very old, and the longer such batteries remain uncharged, the more electrical storage capacity they lose. This can lead to a sudden dip in voltage called a “brown out,” which puts the robot into an unrecoverable state.

Spirit – Opportunity’s sister rover – is presumed to have suffered the same fate in 2010. Engineers tried for more than a year to contact Spirit, but the rover never responded. NASA gave up trying to recontact the rover in May 2011 (during winter on Mars).

NASA is hosting a press conference at 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday to provide an update on Opportunity’s status. However, publicly accessible data from antennas that NASA uses to talk to Opportunity showed the agency’s last planned attempt to contact the rover failed.

“Goodbye old friend,” Mike Siebert, a scientist and NASA’s former driver of Opportunity, tweeted while sharing the data.

You can watch NASA’s live broadcast of the briefing using the YouTube player below. </s> The Opportunity rover is still taking an extended nap on Mars, but NASA has caught sight of the little robot. With the aid of the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), NASA has pinpointed Opportunity’s location on the slopes of Perseverance Valley. Knowing where the rover ended up is a nice development, but it doesn’t get us much closer to reviving Opportunity.

NASA’s Opportunity is ancient by the standards of a Mars rover. It touched down on Mars in 2004, and has traveled more than 28 miles thus far. Opportunity operated continuously until June 2018. That’s when the plucky little rover was overtaken by a massive Martian dust storm. The image from MRO above (click for large version) was captured from 166 miles above the planet’s surface. The white box marks an area 154 feet across (47 meters). Opportunity is the small dot right in the center.

Mars occasionally experiences global dust storms, and the one over this past summer was particularly severe. According to NASA, the tau (a measure of how much light is blocked) reached more than 10. Without dust storms, the tau of Mars’ atmosphere hovers around 1. NASA captured the MRO image of Opportunity on September 20th when the Tau was again just 1.3.

The new image shows Opportunity where it stopped when NASA put it in hibernation mode several months ago. Since Opportunity is solar powered, NASA knew it would be unable to operate during the dust storm. The team hoped it would retain enough power to keep its heaters and communication system running, but that looks increasingly unlikely now.

According to NASA, the terrain around Opportunity looks redder than usual for that region. That could indicate dust from the storm has fallen in a thick layer across the Perseverance Valley. If a layer of dust has covered Opportunity’s solar panels, it may never wake up. It’s been several months of no contact from the rover, indicating it never managed to power back up after the storm settled. Without power for its heaters, the batteries may have become inoperable. So, it might not even matter if the solar panels are clear at this point.

Earlier this month, NASA set a 45-day deadline for Opportunity to wake up. If the rover does not miraculously awaken and ping Earth by then, NASA will consider the mission over. Not everyone is happy with that decision, but Opportunity’s chances are admittedly low.

Now read: The Martian Dust Storm Is Clearing, but Opportunity Remains Silent, NASA Celebrates 5 Years of Curiosity With New Mars Rover Video, and Strange ‘cauliflower’ rocks on Mars may hide clues to ancient life
NASA's Opportunity rover is spotted on satellite imagery three months after it went silent during a Martian dust storm.