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The spacecraft designed by NASA and designed to travel the planet for three months has stopped connecting to Earth after 15 years of service, officials said.
Engineers lost contact with the solar powered vehicle on June 10 during a dust storm that swept Mars. Since then, NASA officials have tried several times to reach the six-wheeled vehicle, about the size of the golf cart.
Officials said that Aportionite's equipment may have been disturbed by the storm while the vehicle was in a place called Preserveance Valley and was blocking the sunlight needed to power the solar panels.
The vehicle was originally designed to travel one kilometer, but eventually traveled 45 km and continued on Mars longer than any other robot sent to the red planet.
NASA engineers on Tuesday sent out new operating orders to try to revive the vehicle, but received no signals, said Thomas Zorbuchin, director of NASA's science mission.
"So here I am with a deep sense of gratitude for achieving the Opportunity mission," Zorbochin said during an online intervention at the California Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA said that during its exploration of the surface of Mars, the vehicle had collected evidence that the planet was wet enough and hot enough in the past to have life on the surface. This included the discovery of white veins from metal gypsum, an indicator of the movement of water through subterranean fissures.
The approntite landed on Mars in January 2004, a few weeks after the Spirit's landing. Spirit completed its mission in 2010 after being suspended in soft ground.
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