NASA's Mars Opportunity rover was expected to complete its mission for only three months but the veteran rover is now celebrating 12 years on the Red Planet, exploring and even conducting science experiments.
Opportunity has been through a lot, where the rover is now working hard to gain solar power as Mars entered winter solstice last January 2. The rover requires sunlight for solar energy in order to charge its batteries, and when daylight is cut short, the rover needs to position to an optimized angle to collect as much precious sunlight as possible.
Since Opportunity has been on the Red Planet for more than a decade, dust has already been collecting on its solar arrays that already limits the amount of sunlight to charge its batteries. Years of buildup has already encrusted the solar panels, where solar energy has been difficult to seep through the rover.
Thanks to Martian Mother Nature, Opportunity was able to go through a much needed "cleaning event" since the rover was already in critical condition. Martian winds and dust devils have blown over the rover that helped removed some of the dust layers, helping sunlight to get quickly absorbed by the solar panels. Opportunity experienced this last "cleaning event" towards the end of 2015 as it entered into Martian winter.
According to John Callas who is the Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Opportunity had become very active in the winter since its solar arrays have been cleaner than the past winters.
Opportunity landed on the Meridiani Planum in January 2004, where it explored Martian environments, providing pivotal clues about the planet's geology, atmosphere and water related sources.
Due to the massive amount of data that Opportunity has amassed over the years, the rover is experiencing some age related concerns on its flash memory, since it is not designed for that long duration of the mission. Opportunity's hard drive is now becoming worn out as NASA engineers are now working on how to bypass memory bank damage, where the rover is now relying on its onboard volatile memory or RAM, which cannot store data that long.
Technical limitations aside, Opportunity can still produce and transmit crucial science where its rock abrasion tool attached to its robotic arm scrubbed a circle on the surface of a rock on Marathon Valley, completing 26 miles since landing in 2004.
When the surface of the rock is removed, its suite of scientific instruments are now studying its composition to gain more information about the evolution of Martian geology. To date, Opportunity is at the Endeavor Crater's rim where the rover has been exploring the site since 2011.