Friday marked the 10-year anniversary of the day Opportunity landed on the Red Planet, the Associated Press reported. After years of roaming Mars' landscape, the rover is showing signs of wear and tear.
But Opportunity, powered by the sun, is still somehow doing its duty, probing the planet and sending back information to NASA scientists. Opportunity's mission was only supposed to last three months when it landed on Mars on Jan. 24, 2004.
"No one ever expected this- that after 10 years a Mars exploration rover would continue to operate and operate productively," project manager John Callas said, the AP reported.
After 10 years, Opportunity has loss the use of one of its six wheels. The rover, which costs nearly $14 million in yearly upkeep, also suffers from joint stiffness and every now and then its flash memory malfunctions, the AP reported.
Opportunity continues to prove that it's worth every penny. Currently the rover is exploring Mars' Endeavor Crater, where it recently discovered evidence that water previously existed, the AP reported.
The rover's findings were published Friday in a study in the journal "Science." The study concluded that the 4 billion year-old rocks inside the crater, the oldest ever found, were in contact with water at a time when Mars' atmosphere was conducive to sustaining microscopic life.
"This is really a neat area," said deputy project specialist Ray Arvidson, from Washington University in St. Louis, the AP reported.
Another Mars rover, Spirit, was sent to Mars a few weeks before Opportunity first landed. It lasted six years, way longer than expected, before it ceased communication with NASA in 2010, the AP reported. However, because maintaining the rovers is so expensive and the mission kept being extended, NASA routinely reviews the missions to determine where to invest funds.
"From all the missions that we have, they're very productive and it would be a shame not to have enough to afford the continuation of those missions," Michael Meyer, from NASA, said according to the AP.
