Mars Exploration Rover Mission (MER), ongoing robotic space mission involving two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, NASA, USA

This 11-minute animation depicts key events of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012. A shorter 4-minute version of this animation, with narration, is also available on our youtube page.

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NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed on the Red Planet 10 years ago. Spirit 'lights' went dim in 2010 but Opportunity is still returning science. NASA administrator Charles Bolden talks about the rovers and the NASA's future on Mars.

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The rover landed on the Red Planet in 2004 and has since driven a record 25.01 miles (40.02 km). The record was previously held by the Russian Lunokhod 2 which roved the lunar surface for 24.2 miles (39 km) in 1973.

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The Mars Opportunity rover has driven 25.9 miles (41.7 kilometers) since it landed in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars on Jan. 25, 2004 (Universal Time, which was Jan. 24, PST). That is farther than any other off-Earth surface vehicle has driven. The rover's work on Mars was initially planned for three months. During that prime mission and for more than a decade of bonus performance in extended missions, Opportunity has returned compelling evidence about wet environments on ancient Mars.

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Having helped design the Mars rovers Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity, NASA engineer Kobie Boykins reveals what these robots are telling us about the existence of life on the red planet.

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This 360-degree panorama was acquired by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity rover looking out over part of an area called Bagnold Dunes, which stretch for miles on Mars. This location, called "Ogunquit Beach," is on the northwestern flank of lower Mount Sharp. Points of interest include the dune’s ripples, and bedrock made from sediments deposited in lakes billions of years ago.

From February to April 2017, Curiosity examined linear sand dunes to compare with what it found in 2015 and 2016 during an investigation of crescent-shaped dunes. This two-phase campaign is the first close-up study of active dunes anywhere other than Earth.

This panorama was stitched together from 115 individual images acquired on March 24-25, 2017, (PST) during the 1,647th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars. The rover's position on Sol 1647 is shown at mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/2017/curiositys-traverse-map-through-sol-1646 as the location reached by a drive on Sol 1646.

The scene is presented with a color adjustment that approximates white balancing, to resemble how the rocks and sand would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.

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Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

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Drive along with the NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover and hear the voices of scientists and engineers behind the mission. Designed to run for 90 days, the exploration spanned more than 15 years from 2004 to 2019. Along the way, it discovered definitive proof of liquid water on ancient Mars and set the off-world driving record.

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If you're a fan of Mars exploration, you're probably in mourning right now. NASA's Opportunity rover has effectively been declared dead after the agency's last attempt to contact the storm-struck rover was met with silence. Officials plan to hold a press conference at 2PM Eastern to discuss the outcome, but it's really a formality at this stage. The machine doesn't stand a chance if it doesn't have power -- Martian winter is coming, and Opportunity needs working heaters to survive the chilly conditions.

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NASA announced the completion of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity’s mission after a final attempt to command the rover on 12 February 2019. Opportunity last communicated with Earth on 10 June 2018, as a global dust storm blanketed the solar-powered rover's location on Mars. Opportunity landed at Meridiani Planum on Mars 25 January 2004. The rover had an initial goal of driving 600 meters and operating for 90 Martian days (sols). Instead, Opportunity operated over 14 years, and traveled over 45 kilometers.
Credit: NASA

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NASA lost contact with the robot in a massive dust storm last June and finally declared an end to its operational lifetime.

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Before a Martian dust storm took out Opportunity in June 2018, the rover was able to capture hundreds of images that NASA has now released as a panorama. The 360-degree photo is composed of 354 images overall, taken by the rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13th through June 10th. It shows the vehicle's final resting place in Perseverance Valley located in Endurance Crater's western rim. The rover lost touch with NASA in June after it reported the approaching storm that ultimately covered its solar panels with dust and rocks.

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NASA Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada guides this tour of the rover's view of the Martian surface.

This panorama showcases "Glen Torridon," a region on the side of Mount Sharp that Curiosity is exploring. The panorama was taken between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019, when the Curiosity team was out for the Thanksgiving holiday. Since the rover would be sitting still with few other tasks to do while it waited for the team to return and provide its next commands, the rover had a rare chance to image its surroundings several days in a row without moving.

Composed of more than 1,000 images and carefully assembled over the ensuing months, the larger version of this composite contains nearly 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape.

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