Nasa’s longest-running rover on Mars, Opportunity, has been pronounced dead — 15 years after it landed on the Red Planet.
The six-wheeled vehicle was built to operate for just three months. But it kept going and going until it was finally doomed by a ferocious dust storm eight months ago.
Flight controllers made numerous attempts to contact it and sent one final series of recovery commands on Tuesday night, accompanied by one last wake-up song, Billie Holiday’s I’ll Be Seeing You.
There was no response, only silence.
Remarkably agile until communication ended last June, Opportunity roamed a record 45km around Mars.
Opportunity and its long-dead twin rover, Spirit, found evidence that ancient Mars had water flowing on its surface and might have been capable of sustaining microbial life.