Mars rover last transmission

"Thank you, Ingenuity."Adios Little BuddySomewhere in a cold corner of Mars, a little helicopter from another world bedded down for its final mission: send its last transmission of data back to Earth and then settle down to become a silent sentry on the Red Planet.NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which became the first ever aircraft piloted on another planet back in 2021, has its flying days behind it after a crash in January and will now be put to use as a stationary monitor to take pictures of its surroundings and collect temperature data for any future Mars explorers who may happen to drop by, according to the space agency.On Tuesday, staff monitored its final link with the helicopter, a transmission of data from Ingenuity to researchers and engineers back on Earth. The milestone comes after the helicopter's almost three-year run exploring the planet, with 1,000 Martian days and a total of 72 flights under its belt."Thank you, Ingenuity, for inspiring a small group of people to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds at the frontiers of space," said NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer and Ingenuity's project manager Teddy Tzanetos.Back LaterThe little copter, which looks like a small toaster with four whirling blades and four spider-like legs, was only meant to last a month and perform a handful of missions, but ended up wildly exceeding its creators' expectations.Working with NASA's Mars rover Perseverance, it was tasked with doing recon work while also testing its flight ability in the thin and cold atmosphere of Mars — not to mention performing in gravity significantly lower than what we're used to on Earth.It looked to be doing so well until it seemingly crashed in January, landing wrong in the red Martian dirt and snapping off one of its rotor blades. But many of its components are still workable after the crash, ensuring its continued use as a monitor to collect surrounding data for any future explorers.More on NASA: Image Shows Mars Helicopter With Blade Completely Snapped Off

Last OpportunityAfter 15 years of crawling across the surface of Mars, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) team sent the last-ever commands to its Opportunity rover today. The rover landed on Mars in 2004 for what started as a 90-day mission. It has since become the longest-running rover NASA has ever sent to Mars.A vicious dust storm forced Opportunity into radio silence back in June — the fiercest Martian storm NASA had ever observed. Dust covering the rover's solar panels caused it to drain its battery reserves. Now, a bitterly cold Martian winter means that Opportunity had virtually no chance of waking itself up.Its last message home, according to science reporter Jacob Margolis: "My battery is low and it’s getting dark."A Successful CareerOpportunity allowed us to uncover a number of Mars' secrets.In 2004, the rover's high-resolution images revealed the presence of hematite — a mineral that typically forms in water. In 2012, it found a patch of nearly pure silica that might have originated from a hot-spring-like environment. Clay minerals and veins of gypsum gave scientists even more evidence for the historical presence of water on Mars.Demise on MarsNASA will hold a press conference this afternoon to reveal the fate of its much-beloved rover.May it rest in peace.READ MORE: NASA is saying goodbye to its Opportunity rover on Mars after eight months of radio silence [The Verge]More on Opportunity: NASA's Opportunity Rover Feared Dead: “An Honorable Death"

An artist's depiction of one of the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, nicknamed Spirit and Opportunity. Opportunity has been offline for weeks due to low power caused by a massive dust storm. Engineers have a rockin' playlist of wake-up songs for the rover.(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)Engineers with NASA's Mars Exploration Rover program have been left hanging on like a yo-yo for 61 days now, after the space agency's Opportunity rover lost power during a Martian dust storm — but they've started greeting each new Martian day the rover may call with a themed song.On Aug. 4 — Opportunity's 5,165th day on Mars — the rover was still asleep. But mission staff at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, hoped to inspire the robot to turn back on by playing Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" in the control room, beginning of a new tradition to wait out the storm."Morale has been a little shaky," Michael Staab, an engineer for the program at JPL who helped initiate the themed daily wake-up song for the humans waiting for Opportunity's long and nerve-wracking nap to end, told Space.com. "This is the first time she [Opportunity] has stopped talking to us and not resumed communication when we expected." [The Epic Mars Dust Storm of 2018 Explained]The musical initiative in the control room isn't entirely new: Mission team members celebrated a daily wake-up song when Opportunity first landed on Mars nearly 15 years ago, in January 2004, Staab said. The rover's mission was originally planned to last just 90 days, but once it became clear that Opportunity would be staying in business on the Red Planet, the tradition faded.Then, in May, came a dust storm to end all dust storms, which roiled around the entire planet and blotted out the sun — an awfully hazardous situation for a solar-powered robot. Opportunity hasn't produced so much as a chord, much less more substantive data, since June 10, according to NASA. (NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, by contrast, is nuclear-powered and thus has not suffered the same ill effects from the dust storm as the Opportunity rover.)"That's