--- title: Mars Rover Opportunity Celebrates Its Eighth Birthday | TIME description: NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity was expected to live only three months, but it just celebrated eight years prowling Mars’ surface canonical: https://time.com/video/RrhAibb0/ og:title: Mars Rover Opportunity Celebrates Its Eighth Birthday og:description: NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity was expected to live only three months, but it just celebrated eight years prowling Mars’ surface og:url: https://time.com/video/RrhAibb0/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/RrhAibb0/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Mars Rover Opportunity Celebrates Its Eighth Birthday twitter:description: NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity was expected to live only three months, but it just celebrated eight years prowling Mars’ surface twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/RrhAibb0/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Mars Rover Opportunity Celebrates Its Eighth Birthday > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Mars Rover Opportunity Celebrates Its Eighth Birthday [Watch (HLS stream): Mars Rover Opportunity Celebrates Its Eighth Birthday](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RrhAibb0.m3u8) (4:53)  _Published 2012-01-31. NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity was expected to live only three months, but it just celebrated eight years prowling Mars’ surface_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:21 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [A Eulogy for NASA's Opportunity Rover ](/video/06y9Ksrk/) ### A Eulogy for NASA's Opportunity Rover [NASA Employees Speak About the Mars Opportunity Rover](/video/qr4pXw1H/) ### NASA Employees Speak About the Mars Opportunity Rover [NASA Will Try To Hack Mars Rover Opportunity To Fix ‘Amnesia’](/video/9MXSdoch/) ### NASA Will Try To Hack Mars Rover Opportunity To Fix ‘Amnesia’ --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] The Mars Rovers are both about the size of a golf cart, and they were launched about a month apart. The Rover Spirit first, and the Rover Opportunity later. Both rovers landed in craters, shallow depressions on opposite sides of the planet. And, their , mission was, to look for signs, of Martian water, which could be, markers , toward Martian life. Now, that water, presumably, would not exist any longer, except in very scattered, deposits or probably underground. But, what you could find on Mars were scars and other signs on the Martian surface, of the water that once flowed and pooled there, in such abundance. [ MUSIC ] The Rovers were built to last for a minimum of three months but NASA tends to low ball these estimates. It makes, it much easier to exceed, expectations. As, it turned out, they greatly outperformed, what even the most optimistic estimates were. The Spirit Rover finally expired, last year in the Spring after six and half years on the Moon. And the Opportunity, Rover has just, celebrated, to the degree, that machines , can celebrate anything, it's eighth birthday. [ MUSIC ] In order , to keep the rovers going, It's necessary , to use, some very low tech methods. The rover opportunity, is now hunkering down, to ride out the very cold, Martian winter. And mission controllers , have parked it on the sunward side of endeavor crater. [ MUSIC ] This allows , what little sunlight, there is to keep its internal systems, from freezing over, and also allows a little bit of a trickle of light, to leak through its solar panels, and also, help keep , the system operating. Those , solar panels, after months and months of exploration, are heavily covered with dust, this happens every year. [ MUSIC ] And, in order for the rover to get moving again, during the Martian spring, controllers , have to rely on the winds , to blow the solar panels, relatively clean. Which will allows, the rover to absorb enough, sunlight, to convert it, into battery energy, and then to move on and continue it's explorations. [ MUSIC ] [ SOUND ] The rovers , have moved at a maximum, of one tenth of a mile per hour, and, this is, actually, faster than it seems, because you can't drive these , cars in, real time. It takes, seven , minutes, for a signal , from Earth, to get up to Mars and for a confirmation of that signal to get down takes another seven minutes. So, what controllers, have to do is use the rover's cameras to survey the surrounding terrain. Then the controllers map out a very precise route to the next destination and send up an entire packet of instructions. The rover, then, creeps, slowly and carefully on its, own and signals when it's arrived safely. As a result over the course of eight years the Rover Opportunity has put only about 14 miles or about 22 kilometers on its odometer. before, Spirit winked out. It had traveled a fair bit less. It put about five miles, on its odometer before , it finally expired. But , that's a whole, lot of martian terrain, and, the rovers have done a whole lot of experimentation and found just, what they came to find. Signs, minerals, salts, sedimentary evidence of the water that once flowed heavily on Mars. And exobiologists, will always tell you, if you're looking for extraterrestrial life, at least life as we know it, You follow the water, or at least the places, the water used to be. [ SOUND ] [ NOISE ] Even, as opportunity , continues its explorations... [ MUSIC ] The next generation rover, the Curiosity Rover, [ SOUND ] which is about the size of an SUV, is on its way. It should, land on, the martian surface , some time in August, about August 20th, if the controllers have their trajectory, [ UNKNOWN ] be exactly right, and it will begin it's own long term exploration of the martian surface. 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