14 Feb 2019; AFP: During 14 years of intrepid exploration across Mars, it advanced human knowledge by confirming that water once flowed on the red planet -- but NASA's Opportunity rover has analyzed its last soil sample.
The robot has been missing since the US space agency lost contact during a dust storm in June last year and was declared officially dead Wednesday, ending one of the most fruitful missions in the history of space exploration.
Unable to recharge its batteries, Opportunity left hundreds of messages from Earth unanswered over the months, and NASA said it made its last attempt at contact Tuesday evening.
"I declare the Opportunity mission as complete," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate told a news conference at mission headquarters in Pasadena, California.
The community of researchers and engineers involved in the program were in mourning over the passing of the rover, known affectionately as Oppy.
"It is a hard day," said John Callas, manager of the Mars Exploration Rover project.
"Even though it is a machine and we're saying goodbye, it's very hard and it's very poignant."
"Spent the evening at JPL as the last ever commands were sent to the Opportunity rover on #Mars," Tanya Harrison, director of Martian research at Arizona State University, tweeted after a stint at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"There was silence. There were tears. There were hugs. There were memories and laughs shared. #ThankYouOppy #GoodnightOppy," she wrote.
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