This was Opportunity. Let me tell you about her sister, Spirit. And their stories are how you can tell their names apart, because they were so appropriately named.
They were twins, identically built in every way. They sent Spirit to the north, and Opportunity to the south. They sent Spirit to what they thought was a dried sea bed, that unfortunately turned out to be nothing of the sort. It was plains, covered in millions of slightly too large, unremarkable, and extremely inconveniently placed rocks. You see pictures of thousandands of rocks? More than likely it came from Spirit.
The nearest interesting feature were mountains that were miles away. And the rovers? They only travel dozens of feet every Sol (One Sol is a martian day, which is 25 hours long). She was only designed to last for ninety days. So they had a hard choice to make. Keep her in her designated area and look at rocks they probably wouldn’t learn much new from, or set course to those mountains, which she likely wouldn’t live long enough. They chose the mountains.
Opportunity was set to land in (or near, can’t remember) a large crater, which they thought was interesting but didn’t expect much. But almost immediately, they found signs of mars having been wet.
Spirit, along her way, got stuck on a rock that they didn’t see. And their efforts to get her off, ended up bogging her down. Winter was approaching, and she spent months stuck. They thought that would be the end of he. Howerver, there, but for the grace of god, she managed to get free before winter.
Meanwhile, Opportunity kept find lots of cool new things.
Spirit along the way somewhere, her front wheel broke down. They thought that might be the end of her. Until someone thought to do the inconcievable- they turned her around, and drove her backwards. She backed herself everywhere she went from there on, dragging her dead front wheel in the sand. She slowed down conciderably, but somehow she kept going.
Opportunity still kept finding neat things that massively advances our knowledge of Mars.
Somewhere aling the way, dust so badly covered Spirit’s solar panels, she was losing power. She was dying. Again, they thought it would be the end of her. But a powerful dust devil happened along and hit her, which ended up blowing most of the dust off her. She started getting good power again.
Spirit made it to the mountain, several years after she landed. The mountain was more rugged than though thought. It was a gamble if she could make it up before winter. If she didn’t, that would be the end of her. It sounds like I’m overusing that, but no. She nearly died several times.
So they decided to go for it. They sent her up, and she barely made it. She took the first photo from a mountain view on another planet. I tried to find it, but the searches are all overrun with Opportunity photos right now.
I am unsure of what happened to Spirit after that, but she wasn’t around much longer. Opportunity had a relatively easy time. She had ample opportunities to find new things. But Spirit fought tooth and nail for every achievement she had.
That’s how you tell them apart. Opportunity had plent of them. And Spirit was full of fight.
And this was the last set of images she ever sent back to us-
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