A portrait of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in a combination of frames taken by its panoramic camera in March 2014. Since then, NASA officials made numerous attempts to reach the six-wheeled rover, which is about the size of a golf cart. Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004, a few weeks after its rover twin, Spirit. Another NASA rover called Curiosity, which arrived on Mars in 2012, continues its work on the Martian surface, collecting soil samples to analyze them for signs of organic compounds. InSight and the next Mars rover mission, scheduled for 2020, are both seen as precursors for eventual human exploration of Mars, an objective NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has said might be achieved as early as the mid-2030s.

Source: Otago Daily Times February 14, 2019 04:52 UTC