--- title: NASA Employees Speak About the Mars Opportunity Rover | TIME description: The rover was only meant to last for 15 days but is now celebrating its 15th anniversary. canonical: https://time.com/video/qr4pXw1H/ og:title: NASA Employees Speak About the Mars Opportunity Rover og:description: The rover was only meant to last for 15 days but is now celebrating its 15th anniversary. og:url: https://time.com/video/qr4pXw1H/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/qr4pXw1H/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: NASA Employees Speak About the Mars Opportunity Rover twitter:description: The rover was only meant to last for 15 days but is now celebrating its 15th anniversary. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/qr4pXw1H/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # NASA Employees Speak About the Mars Opportunity Rover > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: NASA Employees Speak About the Mars Opportunity Rover [Watch (HLS stream): NASA Employees Speak About the Mars Opportunity Rover](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/qr4pXw1H.m3u8) (1:49)  _Published 2018-07-06. The rover was only meant to last for 15 days but is now celebrating its 15th anniversary._ --- Jul 28, 2023 12:13 AM 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 Will Try To Hack Mars Rover Opportunity To Fix ‘Amnesia’](/video/9MXSdoch/) ### NASA Will Try To Hack Mars Rover Opportunity To Fix ‘Amnesia’ [Mars Rover Opportunity Celebrates Its Eighth Birthday](/video/RrhAibb0/) ### Mars Rover Opportunity Celebrates Its Eighth Birthday --- ## Transcript When we landed, we had a 90 day mission, at least that's what we thought at the time. And so we were focused on getting this done in three months, and that we wouldn't go very far from the landing site. We'd be exploring your own yard around your house. And that's the extent of the exploration we thought we would do. But we're now 14 years since they've landed, Opportunity is still going, it's gone 45 kilometers on the surface of Mars and we've greatly expanded what we've explored on Mars with these rovers, so in that sense there was no expectation of that when we landed and what the rovers have told us about Mars is that at one time Mars was much like the earth. That it had warmer temperatures, it had a thicker atmosphere and there was sustained liquid water on the surface. Now there is a lot of debate about how much water there was and where did it go, but at one time in Mars' past, it was earth- like in that it had these habitable conditions. And it happened at a time in which life started on earth So now we know, at least in our solar system, there were at least two worlds, Earth and Mars, that had similar conditions. Life started on one and we are still exploring the question of whether life started or whether there is life on Mars today. They think that, we think about Spirit and Opportunity, we sent two because we wanted one to succeed. If you think of it that way and then you look back from today and you say Opportunity is still alive, and spirit far exceeded the mission expectations. I mean what happened as a result of that was fantastic and it really spring boarded the Mars Program, to where we are today on Mars 2020, with this huge rover, that's actually gonna cache samples from our sample return. 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