Oppy, An Inspiration
Emailed on February 15, 2019 in The Friday Forward
As we continue to build our community of bookkeepers, accountants, and consultants at Malartu we often look to successful counterparts in the industry who have built communities of their own.
“It is therefore that I am standing here with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission as complete,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said at a news conference this week.
Opportunity is the longest-lived roving robot ever sent to another planet, explored the red plains of Mars for more than 14 years, snapping photos and revealing astonishing glimpses into its distant past.
The golf cart-size rover was designed to last only three months, but proved itself to be an unexpected endurance athlete. It traveled more than the distance of a marathon when less than half a mile would have counted as success.
On Tuesday night, NASA made one last call to Opportunity, which was silenced last summer by a giant dust storm. There was no reply.
Of the many groundbreaking discoveries made my Opportunity, the most notable was made exploring the 14-mile-wide Endeavour Crater. The rover discovered bedrock that was older than the crater, lifted upward but not broken apart by the impact that had formed the cavity.
The rock contained clays, which would have formed in waters that were pH-neutral or slightly alkaline.
Water humans could drink.