OPPORTUNITY MARS ROVER

That this House commends NASA’s Opportunity Mars Rover at the end of its incredible 15-year mission exploring the surface of the red planet; understands that the last communication from the six-wheeled solar-powered robot came on 10 June 2018 just before it was enveloped by a dust storm; acknowledges that Opportunity’s mission was officially declared over on 13 February 2019 after exhaustive efforts by engineers to re-establish contact; recalls that Opportunity and its twin rover Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 with the goal of investigating whether the planet ever had the conditions necessary to support life; recognises that the golf-buggy sized robots were designed to last just 90 Martian days and travel 1km but vastly exceeded that expectation with Spirit working for six years and logging a drive distance of almost 8km and Opportunity travelling 45km over 14.5 years; congratulates everyone at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the extraordinary scientific achievement of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission and on the contribution that it has made to humanity’s collective understanding of the solar system; wishes a very safe onward journey to the Curiosity Rover which landed in 2012 and is now the last surviving rover on Mars; and sends its sincere thanks to Opportunity, which has come to its final resting place in Mars’s Perseverance Valley at the end of its incredible journey.