Planet-Wacing Night on Mars: The 2018 Global Dust Storm That Silenced Opportunity
TL;DR
A 2018 planet-wide Martian dust storm blocked sunlight for months, drenching Opportunity’s solar panels and ending its 15-year mission after last contact on June 10, 2018; NASA formally closed the rover’s file in February 2019 with a final odometer of 45.16 km. The storm’s opacity peaked around tau 10.8 at Opportunity, illustrating how even sun-powered rovers can be overwhelmed by Mars’s weather, while Curiosity remained online on plutonium power. The event spurred studies of atmospheric dynamics and Mars-wide water loss, and it helped shift mission design away from sun-dependent surface explorations.,
- On Mars, a dust storm in 2018 grew large enough to cover the entire planet, blocking sunlight for months and draining the solar panels of the Opportunity rover until it went silent — ending a mission that had lasted 15 years Space Daily
- Solar Storms Create a Risk for Mars Exploration Scientists Hadn’t Expected Gizmodo
- Mars' Double Storm Problem Universe Today
- Opportunity was built for a ninety-day mission and a target of six hundred metres, and it ran for fourteen and a half years and forty-five kilometres, until a planet-wide dust storm in 2018 blotted out the sun over Perseverance Valley and its final transmission was Space Daily
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