# data[].attributes.body
This is a Mars pathfinder. It landed on Mars on July 4th 1997. It explored Mars for a total of 3 months. It had front and rear cameras. It was approximately the size of a microwave.

# data[].attributes.body
The Spirit rover was launched together with Opportunity. It had a similar goal, only it landed on a different side of Mars

# data[].attributes.body
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 and is vital to our extended discovery of space. It continues to take many fascinating pictures of many space phenomena.

# data[].attributes.body
The Candarm is a robotic arm on the ISS. Its jobs, according to the Canadian Space Agency are to

Perform Station maintenance

move supplies, equipment, Dextre and even astronauts

perform "cosmic catches" by grappling visiting vehicles and berthing them to the ISS

# data[].attributes.body
NASA uses many types of robots to help them in space exploration, for example the Opportunity Rover was used to survey the land on Mars for signs of water. They they used Voyager 1 to explore space beyond our solar system and our galaxy. They also used robotics to help astronauts in the ISS, like the robotic arm that is used to move large objects around space. The Canadarm2 was used to grab the Hubble Space Telescope on five different space missions. Sometimes the robots can have different types of problems which can be hard to fix because it is hard to do repairs in space and will cost a lot of money. Our opinion is that robots have become an integral part of space exploration. Had has many benefits and those benefits outweigh the costs of the robots. So we should continue the development of these robots.

# data[].attributes.body
The International space station is a Space station that is shared with Canada,  Russia, USA, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Netherlands, Spain,  Switzerland, Sweden, and the UK.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
HOW IT WORKS: The International Space Station

# data[].attributes.body
The Mars Curiosity Rover is one of the two rovers that have been on Mars. As of January 20th, it has been on Mars for a staggering 2357 days. It will continue to last for some time. This article talks about how Curiosity ran into a few issues on mars due to a malfunction when rebooting.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
NASA says that its Curiosity rover is back up and running on Mars after a two-week hiatus from science operations thanks to a mysterious technical issue.

The U.S. space agency reports its engineering team on the mission continues to study what caused the computer reset back on Feb. 15. Steven Lee, the rover's deputy project manager, says that the rover experienced a "one-time computer reset but has operated normally ever since."

"Curiosity encountered a hurdle last Friday, when a hiccup during boot-up interrupted its planned activities and triggered a protective safe mode," NASA reports in a news release.

"The rover was brought out of this mode on Tuesday, Feb. 19, and is otherwise operating normally, having successfully booted up over 30 times without further issues."
Related: NASA's first all-women spacewalk features Michigan native
As it currently stands, Curiosity is one of two active NASA spacecrafts actively studying the Red Planet's surface. The other active spacecraft is the InSight lander, which landed back on Nov. 26, 2018.

The Curiosity rover has been climbing and studying Mount Sharp dating back to 2014, and the space agency says it has reached a clay region that could "offer new clues about the ancient Martian environment's potential to support life."

With the rover back up and running, NASA says it will continue studying clay minerals in the Glen Torridon region which is "especially interesting to the rover's science team,"

"The science team is eager to drill our first sample from this fascinating location," Ashwin Vasavada, the rover's project scientist, said in a NASA news release. "We don't yet understand how this area fits into the overall history of Mount Sharp, so our recent images give us plenty to think about."
Related: Parachute set for NASA's next mission to Mars sets speed record on Earth
Curiosity launched back on Nov. 26, 2011 and landed on the surface of Mars less than a year later on Aug. 5, 2012. The rover's main mission including finding out whether or not the planet had the environmental conditions to support small life forms known as microbes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NASA's Mars Curiosity rover back up and running after mysterious reset

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NASA says that its Curiosity rover is back up and running on Mars after a two-week hiatus from science operations thanks to a mysterious technical issue. The U.S. space agency reports its engineering team on the mission continues to study what caused the computer reset back on Feb. 15.

# data[].attributes.body
The space probe that has gone beyond our galaxy. It has "made it about 12.5 billion miles from Earth since its launch in 1977" (Scientific American). The Voyager 1 will stop transmitting data by about 2025, meaning no data will flow back from that location.

# data[].attributes.body
This article talks about how NASA uses robots to help their research around the world and around our solar system and beyond.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Robotics is the study of robots. NASA uses these machines in many different ways.

# data[].attributes.body
Opportunity Rover was a robot that spent 15 years exploring the surface on Mars. Its mission finally ended in June 2018 when a dust storm hit it hard. It lasted much longer than NASA had expected to, and provided them with large amounts of data about water levels in the rocks and soil. Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 with its twin, Spirit. It reshaped scientists' understanding of the planet's evotion and potential to host life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
One of the most successful and enduring feats of interplanetary exploration, NASA's Opportunity rover mission is at an end after almost 15 years exploring the surface of Mars and helping lay the groundwork for NASA's return to the Red Planet.

The Opportunity rover stopped communicating with Earth when a severe Mars-wide dust storm blanketed its location in June 2018. After more than a thousand commands to restore contact, engineers in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made their last attempt to revive Opportunity Tuesday, to no avail. The solar-powered rover's final communication was received June 10.

"It is because of trailblazing missions such as Opportunity that there will come a day when our brave astronauts walk on the surface of Mars," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "And when that day arrives, some portion of that first footprint will be owned by the men and women of Opportunity, and a little rover that defied the odds and did so much in the name of exploration."

Designed to last just 90 Martian days and travel 1,100 yards (1,000 meters), Opportunity vastly surpassed all expectations in its endurance, scientific value and longevity. In addition to exceeding its life expectancy by 60 times, the rover traveled more than 28 miles (45 kilometers) by the time it reached its most appropriate final resting spot on Mars - Perseverance Valley.

"For more than a decade, Opportunity has been an icon in the field of planetary exploration, teaching us about Mars' ancient past as a wet, potentially habitable planet, and revealing uncharted Martian landscapes," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "Whatever loss we feel now must be tempered with the knowledge that the legacy of Opportunity continues - both on the surface of Mars with the Curiosity rover and InSight lander - and in the clean rooms of JPL, where the upcoming Mars 2020 rover is taking shape."

The final transmission, sent via the 70-meter Mars Station antenna at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Complex in California, ended a multifaceted, eight-month recovery strategy in an attempt to compel the rover to communicate.

"We have made every reasonable engineering effort to try to recover Opportunity and have determined that the likelihood of receiving a signal is far too low to continue recovery efforts," said John Callas, manager of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project at JPL.

Opportunity landed in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars on Jan. 24, 2004, seven months after its launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Its twin rover, Spirit, landed 20 days earlier in the 103-mile-wide (166-kilometer-wide) Gusev Crater on the other side of Mars. Spirit logged almost 5 miles (8 kilometers) before its mission wrapped up in May 2011.

From the day Opportunity landed, a team of mission engineers, rover drivers and scientists on Earth collaborated to overcome challenges and get the rover from one geologic site on Mars to the next. They plotted workable avenues over rugged terrain so that the 384-pound (174-kilogram) Martian explorer could maneuver around and, at times, over rocks and boulders, climb gravel-strewn slopes as steep as 32-degrees (an off-Earth record), probe crater floors, summit hills and traverse possible dry riverbeds. Its final venture brought it to the western limb of Perseverance Valley.

"I cannot think of a more appropriate place for Opportunity to endure on the surface of Mars than one called Perseverance Valley," said Michael Watkins, director of JPL. "The records, discoveries and sheer tenacity of this intrepid little rover is testament to the ingenuity, dedication, and perseverance of the people who built and guided her."

Drive along with the NASA's Opportunity Mars rover and hear the voices of scientists and engineers behind the mission. Designed to run for 90 days, the exploration spanned more than 15 years from 2004 to 2019. Along the way, it discovered definitive proof of liquid water on ancient Mars and set the off-world driving record. For more information on the Mars Exploration Rovers and all of NASA's Mars missions, visit mars.nasa.gov. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

More Opportunity Achievements

Set a one-day Mars driving record March 20, 2005, when it traveled 721 feet (220 meters).

Returned more than 217,000 images, including 15 360-degree color panoramas.

Exposed the surfaces of 52 rocks to reveal fresh mineral surfaces for analysis and cleared 72 additional targets with a brush to prepare them for inspection with spectrometers and a microscopic imager.

Found hematite, a mineral that forms in water, at its landing site.

Discovered strong indications at Endeavour Crater of the action of ancient water similar to the drinkable water of a pond or lake on Earth.

All of the off-roading and on-location scientific analyses were in service of the Mars Exploration Rovers' primary objective: To seek out historical evidence of the Red Planet's climate and water at sites where conditions may once have been favorable for life. Because liquid water is required for life, as we know it, Opportunity's discoveries implied that conditions at Meridiani Planum may have been habitable for some period of time in Martian history.

"From the get-go, Opportunity delivered on our search for evidence regarding water," said Steve Squyres, principal investigator of the rovers' science payload at Cornell University. "And when you combine the discoveries of Opportunity and Spirit, they showed us that ancient Mars was a very different place from Mars today, which is a cold, dry, desolate world. But if you look to its ancient past, you find compelling evidence for liquid water below the surface and liquid water at the surface."

All those accomplishments were not without the occasional extraterrestrial impediment. In 2005 alone, Opportunity lost steering to one of its front wheels, a stuck heater threatened to severely limit the rover's available power, and a Martian sand ripple almost trapped it for good. Two years later, a two-month dust storm imperiled the rover before relenting. In 2015, Opportunity lost use of its 256-megabyte flash memory and, in 2017, it lost steering to its other front wheel.

Each time the rover faced an obstacle, Opportunity's team on Earth found and implemented a solution that enabled the rover to bounce back. However, the massive dust storm that took shape in the summer of 2018 proved too much for history's most senior Mars explorer.

"When I think of Opportunity, I will recall that place on Mars where our intrepid rover far exceeded everyone's expectations," Callas said. "But what I suppose I'll cherish most is the impact Opportunity had on us here on Earth. It's the accomplished exploration and phenomenal discoveries. It's the generation of young scientists and engineers who became space explorers with this mission. It's the public that followed along with our every step. And it's the technical legacy of the Mars Exploration Rovers, which is carried aboard Curiosity and the upcoming Mars 2020 mission. Farewell, Opportunity, and well done."

Mars exploration continues unabated. NASA's InSight lander, which touched down on Nov. 26, is just beginning its scientific investigations. The Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater for more than six years. And, NASA's Mars 2020 rover and the European Space Agency's ExoMars rover both will launch in July 2020, becoming the first rover missions designed to seek signs of past microbial life on the Red Planet.

JPL managed the Mars Exploration Rovers Opportunity and Spirit for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about the agency's Mars Exploration program, visit:

-end-

Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726 / 202-358-1003
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NASA's Record-Setting Opportunity Rover Mission on Mars Comes to End - NASA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
One of the most successful and enduring feats of interplanetary exploration, NASA's Opportunity rover mission is at an end after almost 15 years exploring the

# data[].attributes.body
Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot (PUFFER) is a small robot which can fold itself to wedge into small spaces to further explore planets, these small robots can be deployed alongside a rover and gather more data. Several can be stacked by folding them like cards. PUFFER originated from a paper prototype which was developed by Karas While he was a grad student at UC Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystem Lab. The robot has 2 wheels and a tail which is used for stabilization, PUFFER also has solar panels on it's belly which it can use to recharge by flipping over. For "sight" the robot uses a high-resolution microimager sensitive enough to see objects that are just 10 microns in size made by Distant Focus Corporation. The bot has a "skittering walk" that keeps the bot inching forward, one wheel at a time, without slipping this was made with a partnership between the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab and the PUFFER team. So far, the PUFFER has been tested at a ski resort in Grand Junction, Colorado; Big Bear, California; and on Mt. Erebus, an active volcano in Antarctica, it was successful in all of these tests. The bot can go about 2050 feet or 625 meters on one charge. PUFFER is till being developed as it still needs instruments to conduct research, and the team wants to add autonomy so that they can have a fleet of PUFFERS researching on the same planet together. The PUFFER already is made with Mars ready materials for example it uses Nomex which lets it withstand the high temperature on mars and is the materiel used in the balloons used to get Spirit and Opportunity to the surface of mars. A company called Pioneer Circuits, Santa Ana, California, helped integrate the Nomex into the folding circuit boards.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Origami-inspired Robot Can Hitch a Ride with a Rover

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
JPL's PUFFER is a scout robot that can flatten itself to crawl into tight spaces.