“My battery is going low and it’s getting dark.” That was the last message to come from the rover Opportunity, the 407-pound terrestrial rover that had been working on the surface of Mars for the last fifteen years. After a planet-wide dust storm reduced the ability of the rover’s solar panels to produce electricity in early June 2018, the rover went into a hibernation mode from which it wasn’t able to recover from. After thousands of attempts to contact the rover, on February 12th, 2019, one last attempt to contact the rover was made, then a final salute was played: Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

Opportunity was launched on July 7, 2003 on a Delta II rocket and after a little over six months’ time in transit, the rover touched down on Meridiani Planum on January 25th, 2004. From that moment, the rover traveled over twenty-eight miles, delivered over 217,000 photographs, determined that gypsum and hematite were present on the planet, indicating that at one point in time Mars did support water on the surface, and even got to see eclipses from a Martian point of view, when two of the planet’s moons traveled in the path of the sun. It discovered the presence of an ancient hydrothermal vent that could have existed on the floor of a lake, and even discovered the first known meteorite on another planet.

Opportunity was only supposed to have a lifespan of about three months. But Opportunity thrived while the other Martian rover, Spirit, only lasted until 2010, when the rover’s batteries were finally overwhelmed by the cold. The Martian study does not end with Opportunity‘s death. Curiosity has been traversing Gale Crater since August 6, 2012, and Mars 2020 is currently expected to launch toward Mars on July 17th, 2020, with different scientific instruments and a core drill that will allow for even further testing regarding the past and potential future of Mars.

Space is currently the ultimate achievable goal for mankind. It is astonishing to think that we’ve been capable of putting humans and plants onto the Moon (the Chinese attempted to grow a cotton plant on the darkside of the Moon, and had sprouts before the cold killed them off.) Mankind’s quest for information and knowledge knows no bounds, and Opportunity reflected not only that desire to know more but reflected upon the scientists and individuals that created a machine that was hardy enough to last as long as it did. Maybe one day a human sojourner will come across the rover, take the time to dust off the solar panels, and reflect on how far the human race has come since Mars first became a point of study.