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It roved a staggering 45.16 kilometers across the red planet. //
Late Tuesday night, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent their final data uplink to the Opportunity rover on Mars. Over this connection, via the Deep Space Network, the American jazz singer Billie Holiday crooned "I'll Be Seeing You," a song which closes with the lines:
I'll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I'll be looking at the moon
But I'll be seeing you
Opportunity landed on Mars more than 15 Earth years ago, on January 25, 2004. So much time has passed since then. Facebook would not be created until a month later. YouTube would not get its first video upload for more than a year. George W. Bush was still in his first presidency. NASA's Cassini spacecraft had not yet even arrived in the Saturn system.
And yet from that moment on, Opportunity and its sister rover, Spirit, began plugging along the surface of Mars. Originally designed for 90-day lifetimes, the rovers persisted. Spirit lasted until 2010, when its batteries were unable to keep the spacecraft's critical components from freezing.