I've been keeping a log of the spurious locks, ostensibly on Opportunity, since November.
They occurred at these times:

3:37 AM - 1 Nov 2018 from Paddys River, Canberra
6:25 AM - 4 Nov 2018 from Paddys River, Canberra
5:20 AM - 7 Nov 2018 from Paddys River, Canberra
11:02 AM - 14 Nov 2018 from Robledo de Chavela, Espa<C3><B1>a
12:46 PM - 15 Nov 2018 from Robledo de Chavela, Espa<C3><B1>a
1:01 PM - 15 Nov 2018 from Robledo de Chavela, Espa<C3><B1>a
1:59 PM - 17 Nov 2018 from Robledo de Chavela, Espa<C3><B1>a
2:51 PM - 18 Nov 2018 from Robledo de Chavela, Espa<C3><B1>a
3:44 PM - 24 Nov 2018 from California, USA
5:57 PM - 25 Nov 2018 from California, USA
8:24 PM - 26 Nov 2018 from California, USA
9:52 PM - 30 Nov 2018 from California, USA
2:09 PM - 29 Dec 2018 from Robledo de Chavela, Espa<C3><B1>a
7:01 PM - 30 Dec 2018 from California, USA
7:37 PM - 30 Dec 2018 from California, USA
8:47 PM - 5 Jan 2019 from California, USA
9:47 PM - 9 Jan 2019 from California, USA
9:39 PM - 9 Feb 2019 from California, USA

Very frequent during November and then becoming less frequent. Perhaps the software has been improved to better rule out false locks. Although the reports tend to blame MRO, I think it is actually Maven that was the subject of many of the false locks.

NASA to Share Results of Effort to Recover Mars Opportunity Rover

So this is it probably. An ending.

This is going to be a tough one to watch folks. Just remembering what Steve Squyres said in a recent interview; an honourable way to go. No accidental commands to turn off, programming glitches, unit conversion mix-ups, or anything like that. Mars allowed Oppy to survive, until it didn't....

Oh man... .

This is my way to say goodbye to Oppy. 15 years, 13Km and I don't know how many sequences. Thank you Doug for creating this forum and allowing me to share the road with all of you. I am eternally grateful to Mark Maimone for introducing me to the MER folks. I still can't believe that they let an Italian driver roam on Mars.

Paolo, signing off.

PS: the URL links my my server at home which has a self signed certificate, so don't be surprised if you get a message saying it is a dangerous web site.

Sleep well little rover. You did good. We know where you are, and we will be there when you awake again. Sweet dreams.

A sad day but a truly incredible journey.

I put Ryan Anderson's poem to my favourite Oppy comp...


...and I imagined a sequel to Emily's Curiosity book a while back...



My thoughts with all the engineers & drivers.

I don't think anyone in their wildest fantasies would have dared to dream that this amazing rover would convert a 90 day mission into 14+ years. All my congrats to the MER team for an amazing run.

Opportunity...how I will miss you. Your spectacular landing. The daily updates. The insane craters you visited.

I remember fondly you driving off into what I assumed at the time was essentially the void.....an absolutely impossible drive distance to Endeavor that I laughed out loud about when I first heard they were going to attempt it. Laughably impossible I thought. Man, did you ever prove me wrong.

Opportunity....you are probably the biggest rock star of all unmanned space explorations humans have ever done....certainly without question the biggest on Mars. I doubt anything will ever trump you there (unless one day something physically finds running water....a man can dream....)

One day, men will build a shrine around you.....until that day rest old friend. Your work is done.

I don't really know what words to use.

Without MER - (and more specifically, with Steve and Jim committing to that policy of releasing all that raw imagery) there would be no UMSF.

Fromthe first image I ever posted here, this feels like the place where Opportunity and Spirit's adventures were documented more thoroughly, with more passion and dedication and creativity, than anywhere else. That wasn't my doing - it was this entire crazed community of like minded explorers.

Without UMSF I'd never have got the chance to meet people from MER and from JPL - I'd never have been invited to speak at conferences about we band of merry armchair astronauts exploring the solar system through the vicarious use of all the amazing data that gets thrown out into the digital ether

And they would never have been crazy enough to ask me to work at JPL back in 2010. I'd never have got to work on Eyes on the Solar System and the MSL landing animation and DSN Now and all the other cool projects I did in the EPO world here. I'd never have worked with the innovative folks in the OpsLab using the HoloLens to let people 'walk' on Mars. I'd never have started training for Ops as an ECAM PUL on MSL, and with those skills, become an ECAM/MI PUL on Opportunity, even if for a brief spell. We would never have taken that crazy selfie on Sol 5000. I don't think JunoCam would even exist without MER proving that the outside world can be entrusted to take good data and make great things with it.

And personally - because of the hospitality of people like Paolo, Alice, Veronica, Scott - Pasadena became home. Most specifically, without Scott I'd never have met my amazing wife Jenn, and our little girl Amelia - about to turn 14 months old - would not exist. MER was, in every way, life changing. And it was life changing for so many other people as well.

Today, at our farewell celebration press conference, I will wear my MER Sol 5000 shirt with immense pride.

How far we've all come.

I'll leave it with the note I left on Monday's on Quill ( MER's note taking and reporting portal for operations ) on the Engineering Camera page for Sol 5352

The Forum logo has been updated with our first-ever animated banner by supermember and director of Galilean photography Hendric in memorial to and in celebration of this historic program and its enduring legacy.

As Doug, our founder and chairman, just wrote, MER was life-changing for a great many people in a great many ways. In addition to him I know of several members here who have gone on to new careers, new adventures, and new lives all through the power of our marvelous little corner of the web. A great many of us including me have made new friends for life, and ALL of us have continued to share the adventure of robotic spaceflight at a level that few of us--esp. us older people--could have ever imagined not that long ago at all.

And it was all because of two tiny little rovers on a tiny little planet far, far away...and above all, the massively talented people who put them there.

We owe them more than we can ever repay. Ever.

Sleep well, Oppy. You have earned your rest.

https://xkcd.com/2111/

In 2014 me and my hubbie made an Oppie pilgrimage of sorts. No, we did not visit JPL-that wasn't in the cards. What we did do was drive around Sudbury Ontario and visit many of the locations named by MER scientists for some very scientifically interesting rocks, like Whitewater Lake, Onaping (some scenic falls at the terrestrial Onaping), Copper Cliff, Vermillion, Chelmsford. I imagined Oppie roving around even as we did in a car. I thought about the asteroid that blasted out the Sudbury crater millions of years ago, depositing ejecta as far as the Dakotas.

But now, no more Oppie roving to find beautiful places like The Spirit of St. Louis, amongst many others.

Goodbye Oppie. You did unbelievably great work. I will miss you.

Placard up now on NASA TV for brief, beginning at the top of the hour.


Started.

Thank you Nick for the opportunity to make the memorial banner. A longer post with my thoughts and a link to the original files is in EVA chit-chat.

You did good rover, you did good.

I didn't think about this till now, but while I was at NASA, I had a very tiny (nano-sized) role in planning some software for the upcoming MERs. That was all the way back in 2001, and now, an astonishing 18 years later, the MER mission is complete.

I hope everyone has enjoyed this mission which was a sort of anti-failure – a success ridiculously greater than anyone reasonably expected at the outset. I still think of that tense period in January 2004 when Spirit's software bug worried us as Opportunity was closing in for its own landing, and an online odds-making site gave only a 66% probability that Opportunity would land safely.

I even enjoyed taking my own photos of the dust storm that ultimately killed Opportunity. It felt like being part of the whole mission, from beginning to end.

Who knows when anything like this will come our away again: A rolling mission on another planet so long-lived that its images and discoveries become overwhelming in their scope.

So long as Curiosity carries the torch, the streaks goes on of humanity controlling at least one active rover on the surface of Mars. Next year, two more take flight to keep it going.

No one can predict the course of human history on Earth, but the probability seems high that in distant futures of glory and catastrophe here on Earth, there will still be a silent, wheeled Opportunity at rest in the Meridiani region of Mars, witnessing sunrises and sunsets for millions, perhaps billions of years to come, but rolling no more.

There were MANY people involved with designing and building MER. My tiny role (with Mike Tauber) was using Traj/Fiat to do the zero margin Thermal Protection System thickness determination for the aeroshell. My work appeared in the "Mars Exploration Rover Aeroshell, Critical Design Review, 30-31 May 2001" presented by Lockheed Martin.


For what it is worth... My prediction is that MER-B (my preferred name for "Opportunity") will be on public display at a future Martian version of the Smithsonian. Just as school children today like to have their pictures taken standing next to the Apollo-11 CM, future school kids will be romping around the MER-B exhibit and leaving behind empty beverage cans... A happier ending....

I have not posted here for god knows how many years, life and other obligations take their toll, but I have been silently following Oppy from a distance
Today I felt like I lost a friend of mine.

Farewell Oppy, and thanks for bringing excitement to our miserable earthly lives for so many years.

Cheers to my old friends at UMSF

Farewell Oppy and thanks for the memories. Sleep well.

A big and heartfelt thank you to the MER project team for allowing us to share in the exploration of the solar system. Spirit and Opportunity became a part of my life. I checked in essentially everyday for 15 years. Thank you also to Doug for this place and to everyone at UMSF who enriched the experience with their image wizardry, mapping and commentary.

When I look up at Mars in the night sky I will remember.

Can we have one more DSN transmission tomorrow to send Valentine's cards to Oppy?

Oppy, we will miss you!

Well said! I can't add much that hasn't already been expressed other than Oppy/Spirit being the reason I was able to seek out and find UMSF so many years ago, needing a enlightening alternative to junk-plagued forums elsewhere, so many thanks go out to Doug for keeping such high standards, not to mention everyone involved in all aspects of making MER such an incredible mission.

So its an expectantly sad yet satisfying end to one truly epic mission that has so profoundly changed our scientific, and just as much aesthetic, conceptions of the 4th planet. I hope to see a day when Mars has the equivalent of park systems to preserve all these traverse paths as historical monuments.

I think Oppy has become to many of us a sibling traveler, as we look back at a decade and a half and remember where we were and what was going on in our lives when Oppy reached various destinations over the years, she'll always be a part of that too.. Here's to Oppy, may you finally rest in peace!

This is very sad news. It's similar to the loss of Pathfinder to me. They, like Spirit and Curiosity, were easy to imagine as agents of exploration, because they were carrying out an activity that any of us could do: driving around a desert. Other than the craters and the tint to the images, they could have been on earth. Even craters aren't unknown here! Their images seemed to show a place that wasn't a strange new world, but was simply unexplored.

I like the comment by Steve Squires that Explorer1 posted. I would add: it took a planet-encircling dust event to stop it.

Good work to all of the people involved with the program. You put another paving-stone in the path to the stars.

Djellison - Regarding Your Post Tuesday 4:42pm

Unmanned Space Flight is one of the finest websites ever. All of us research and surf everywhere, always have. Found UMSF back when Oppy and Spirit had both recently landed. Have looked in (you know how it is) every day since.

A hole in one! With blueberries! A wide plain with Columbia Hills in the distance.

UMSF Is different. Wonderfully different. There is no other site like it I've found.

Unchanging – in the best way – honest, reasonable, level-headed, forthright. Compelling. The quality of the discussion, the respect, all the people that know so much going back and forth. It challenges the mind.

We can hit the Home Page now to browse many probes past, present and future.


All this because y'all wanted back then to create an open forum for clear, knowledgeable discussion of extraordinary exploration made easily accessible to everyone around the world?


You have succeeded beyond all expectations. As Oppy succeeded beyond all expectations.

If UMSF essentially came about because of the MER expeditions...

Then Opportunity will live on, in a very real way. As the Heart of Unmanned Space Flight.

To anyone, everyone who has anything to do with making and sharing and explaining these journeys -

Thank You.

Hail to Opportunity, both an indomitable martian beast and our own eyes there.
Cheers for its marvellous team of skilled trainers.

kingdom of opportunity

Thank you mission planners, builders, and engineers. You are magnificent!
Thank you Doug for the inspiration and creation of UMSF
This loss stings, and not in the same way as other mission endings.
But there is much to look forward to.
We were lucky to live through and participate in the MER era.
And for that I am grateful

15 years is a big chunk of a life. Jobs and relationships have come and gone. Children born. Loved ones died. Economies have groaned and heaved.
Wars have been fought. Governments have come and gone. New technologies have changed all our lives.
But through all of it, Oppy carried on, reminding us that this kind of exploration should rise above the day to day noise of humanity.

I look forward to Curiosity still being around in a decade, and to MRO taking the birthday picture.

P

I don't know bout MRO, but RTGs never die. They just slowly fade away.

Other current sources may touch zero, which turns out to be harder to anticipate and recover from.

I will miss the ambitions that grew by orders of magnitude. I will miss the crazy ideas that zooming out EVEN FARTHER might yield places you'll reach because you just keep going. There was this limitless potential at ends with engineering conservatism that is just so singular. A thing cannot exceed reasonable expectations so wildly without being more than a thing... parts and pieces that gelled into a resilient being, that's now stopped being. And that's sad and wonderful altogether.

Fifteen years on Mars. Sleep well, for now- one day there will be the rumble of wheels, or even the tramp of boots, coming to honour the robot, and the team that worked on her, whose mission was once given at 90 days...

Congratulations and greetings for sure, but sometimes, coincidences...
From Spirit "Spacecraft on internal power" on June 10th 2003 to Opp's last call on June 10th 2018... 15 years... to the day.
And June 10th is my son's birthday!!!
MER spread from its 9 to its 24 years...to the day
Can't remember live before...

About a week ago I was cleaning up files on my computer and I came across the early Sols of Spirit and Opportunity. It took me back to a time when every new image was exciting, especially if a 3d image could be made from them. As years went on I didn't visit the forum as much. We've been lucky to have this place to see these amazing images from these amazing machines. As I read through these posts commemorating the little rover that could and did, I can't help but shed a tear knowing that something special happened here.
I was always a little intimidated by the level of intelligence and discussion on this forum. I didn't post much but I always enjoyed the discussions of the various issues. The forum has always kept a high standard. Though it started with the MER project, it is so much more now. It is my main source of news and images of the exploration being done. May it never power down.

Thank you to all the scientists and engineers who made the exploration possible and thanks to Doug and the rest of the members for the site to be a part of the exploration.

I still vividly remember after Endurance scrolling down a big MOC image to our next destination. And scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling... And that was only Victoria!

I'll never forget scrutinizing the horizon with people here, doing triangulation, parallax, long-baseline stereo, Phil-o-vision, inverse polars, trying to get a sense of where we were and what we could see. Or spotting the Earth in pancam, or star trails around the Martian pole.

Often on these pages we've said things like "we moved 12 metres today", or "the view when we get to Victoria will be incredible". That such statements make sense is a direct result of the MER team's decision to make the jpegs public immediately. That meant we could truly take part in these missions, rather than just read news reports. And feel like we were all exploring a new world together.

Congratulations to the team on an extraordinarily complete mission.

From watching Opportunity launch (well watching twice due to the first cancellation) to the dust storm has been an amazing journey. But for all the vistas and data gathered what will remain in my memory is the engineering design and remote troubleshooting that turned a short mission in terms of time and distance into a breathtaking operational performance.

For years Spirit's and Opportunity's images were like an extra window in my house, one I could use to look into another world first thing in the morning. There were many exhilirating moments of exploration, saves through engineering wizardy and unexpected events. One moment bright in my memory is the first cleaning event, the realisation that the mission could go on longer than just a simple mission extension...

Thanks to the team for the inspiring science and uncompromising engineering. Thanks to the members of the forum for keeping the mission a collective experience through all these years of Mars and Earth.

What a ride it has been! My thanks to all who made it possible. (JPL, take a bow...)

I remember the feeling of amazement when Opportunity returned the first photos after landing (still on the lander platform), there were LAYERED SEDIMENTS in the wall of the little crater! Blueberries!

...and then on to so many more things. For MANY years!

I now viscerally feel the magnificent desolation of Mars -- I have, in a sense, lived on another planet.

And my thanks to this forum, which greatly enhanced the enjoyment and experience. I even got a speculation or two right (remember the olivine meteorite?).

Such a journey...

Topic title changed to reflect not only Oppy's final campaign but also our thoughts and recollections.

Thanks again, old girl. Hope that on some distant day my descendants will visit you and pay respects on my behalf.

I'd never thought to do this calculation before and it may, to your taste, magnify or mask the glory of Opportunity, but the rover drove a bit over 1/500th the circumference of Mars. That, to my mind, is a striking achievement – a tiny fraction in most contexts, but the fact that it's even macroscopic on the planetary scale is stirring.

Perhaps its more humbling on a human scale to note that Opportunity's trek exceeded a marathon, and coincidentally, equals the same as the longest distance I've run in a day.

May Rosalind Franklin and Mars 2020 notch a respectable fraction of such distance.

I am really grateful to follow this mission since years. One of the first things I remember as young boy years ago was a newspaper article which said, that the Viking 1 mission was in 1982 still ongoing, since 6 years. That was really fascinating, and impressed me really.

The first thing about the MER mission I hear about was a documentation, which showed the efforts to build and test the rovers. I saw here with how much passion Steve Squyres get the things rolling, even with the badest setbacks (the parchute wasn't unfolded, the camera failed, etc...). When you read the book "Roving mars" you will also see how much could have also been get wrong. And I feel the passion for this mission and its two rovers never dropped any bit, and that was a important part why this mission took so long.

And then this little rover landed in a hole-in-one in a little crater. Thank you for 15 wonderful years and for the excitement and the curiosity in this mission.

I remember the first moves out of eagle crater, and the look into the wide Meridiani Planum. What a view! And lurking at the horizon: Endurance crater! Can the rover drive so far, so long? We only have 90 sols!
And every new crater showed a new perspective: Wonderful. Driving to Victoria crater: This is so long. Can we make this? Yeah! And what wonderful views of this crater.
Or driving into the Purgatory dune: Can we drive out of this? And the first dust storm, affecting both rovers: Is this the end? Not yet.

Driving to the Endeavour crater: So far away, and such a long journey to the plains of Meridiani. Finding meteorites in the plain: Wow, cool!
And the first views inside the Endeavour crater: So impressive, such a view. And so much to explore.

This mission also shows, how many ideas the engineers have to solve even the most difficult problems at a distance of hundred miles aways from home.

I would thank everyone of the MER team for this wonderful journey through the deserts of Mars.
Also thanks to the posters in this forum, for providing new panorama photos or updating the maps, so I could easily be part of this mission.

I'm not really sad that this mission ends now: I just so grateful for the last 15 years roving on Mars, to become a real explorer like the captains of the ships sailing to new continents. Opportunity became a friend, but we all knew sometimes it would end.

I was in the Orbiter Processing Facility at KSC one day near the end of the Shuttle program, and they had a big banner that said "Don't be sad that it's ending, be happy that you were part of it" (or words to that effect). That could apply here as well. Luckily, many of us got to be part of it from a distance.

Phil

RIP Oppy

I'll never forget:

• the bulls-eye landing
• the intact meteorite found nearby
• The marathon distance traveled on its odometer
• 'blueberries'
• Endurance
• Endeavor
• Victoria
• ...and water

One remark at the mission-completion press conference caught my attention. It was speculated that the stuck-on heater, combined with a mistimed clock, may have doomed the rover. That would explain a lot.

This made me think of how arthritis in elderly people is not directly life-threatening, but it can cause a fall that may prove fatal.

Ultimately, human or robot cannot beat Father Time, or the Great Ghoul of Mars. But the torch is passed....

I have been lurking here almost daily but a long time has gone since my last post.
This is a bittersweet situation, I'm sad to see the end of this mission but on the other hand happy while remembering the whole jouney of these rovers as followed by all of us, UMSF members. And above all I am deeply grateful to NASA and the MER project members for having made us participants of this mission, "armchair rover drivers" I would say, in particular with their decision to promptly release images to the public. That "wow!" feeling after realizing that we were the first humans looking at new scenes taken on another world just a few hours before is something I will never forget.
Thanks for this incredible adventure!

I remember the day I discovered UMSF, I was back then a teenager looking for fresh informations and pictures about Spirit and Oppy. I was so excited to discover this high level forum gathering passionate people, sharing panoramas and giving so precise informations to follow the adventures of these rovers. During a long time I have been reading at posts, then I timidly shared my first image processing work and identification of horizon features. Then I shifted my interests from MER to Curiosity. But I still kept an eye on the amazing little rover Oppy.
Thanks Doug for having created UMSF and thanks MER project members for having made possible to live these martian adventures!

I too am a longtime lurker (longer than my Join date). I have a passion for planetary science (went to school for it, once worked at NASA) but lack the deep experience and knowledge the regulars here have. So...I keep my mouth shut. :-)

I really enjoy these forums.

For all those who have followed this mission closely. I made a last update for Opportunity!

The Martian Panoramic

https://sites.google.com/site/lespanoramiquesmartiens/
_______________________________________________________________________

Pour tout ceux qui ont suivit de près cette mission. J'ai fais une dernière mise à jour pour Opportunity !

Les Panoramiques Martiens

https://sites.google.com/site/lespanoramiquesmartiens/

To celebrate Opportunity’s spectacular journey I created a 360 degrees panoramic animation of the entire mission.
It’s 7 minutes long, raw and unpolished but I think its quite enjoyable already. Don’t forget to pause the movie when it’s going too fast.

Thank you Opportunity and everyone involved, it was an incredible ride!

https://vimeo.com/319041029
Click to view attachment

Wow. That was awesome! Thanks for sharing.

I second that. Outstanding.
Nice to see some cloud studies there too.

Is Oppy going to be renamed the 'something something memorial station' at some point?

P

Historically rovers haven't gotten names like this. The MER-B landing site was already named. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extra...trial_memorials