Will continue efforts to contact a broken rover, opportunity: NASA

NASA will continue to seek contact with an aging robotic vehicle that was covered by a dust storm on Mars in June and has since been stuck. Now, the space agency plans to keep trying, rather than give up its efforts this month, as officials said late August.

"After a review of the progress of the listening campaign, NASA will continue its current strategy of contacting the Opportunity rover in the near future," said a statement posted on NASA's website.

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"Winds could rise in the coming months on Opportunity's location on Mars, causing dust to move Solar panels of the rover.The agency will rebadess the situation in January 2019 time range. " The engineers hope that the solar rover will have enough sunlight to automatically launch its own recovery procedures.

His last contact with the Earth took place on June 10th.

Opportunity and his twin, Spirit, are a pair of unmanned robotic vehicles. designed by NASA to travel short distances on the Martian surface and transmit data on conditions on Earth. They landed on Mars in 2003 for a mission that was to last 90 days and extend over 1,000 meters (meters).

Spirit lasted 20 times longer than that. He was stuck in loose soil in 2009 and his mission was officially declared in 2011.

The potential of the mission is multiplied by 60, he has traveled 45 kilometers and has found traces of water on Mars and conditions that could have been adapted to the maintenance of microbial life.

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Rover fans launched a Twitter campaign under the hashtag #SaveOppy, calling on NASA to keep trying to reach it.

Opportunity Rover, also known as Mars Exploration Rover, is NASA's robotic robot has been active on Mars since 2004. It was launched on July 7, 2003 as part of the Exploration Robot Program NASA, and landed at Meridian Planum on January 25, 2004. An opportunity traveled 45 kilometers (28 miles) and found evidence of water presence on Mars and conditions that could have been suitable for maintaining microbial life .