The American Opportunity probe was "killed" by Mars. What did it find on Mars?

Since the rover Opportunity arrived on the surface of Mars on June 25th, 2004, thousands of photos and detection data have been sent back to Earth. The original planned life of the rover Opportunity was only 90 days, but the actual working time far exceeded its planned working time. It was not until February 20 19 13 that NASA officially announced the end of the mission after more than 800 unsuccessful contacts with Opportunity and the rover. If this can also be regarded as an opportunity for Mars to "kill" the rover, then the reaction of Mars may be too slow.

The rover Opportunity is based on the Mars Odyssey orbiter successfully launched at 200 1 and the subsequent Mars exploration plan. The Odyssey orbiter in the orbit of Mars provides signal relay for the rover Opportunity. The signal transmission of Opportunity does not need to be directly connected to the earth, which is one of the reasons why Opportunity can continue to work for 15 years.

Opportunity's great achievements in space history are mainly reflected in two aspects:

First, the super-high automatic control ability. Because the earth is far away from Mars, there is a communication delay of nearly 6 minutes for real-time control on the ground, so it is impossible to carry out remote control. The entire landing plan of the rover must rely on Opportunity itself. Within minutes of landing, the rover Opportunity successfully completed the tasks of atmospheric deceleration, parachute deceleration and reverse rocket start. And in the final stage, the reverse rocket kept Opportunity hovering several meters on the surface of Mars, started the spherical airbag to wrap the rover in it, and used the recoil of the airbag to complete the soft landing. This can be said to be the most complex automatic control task that human beings carry out outside the surface. No less than our recently completed Chang 'e-5 lunar sampling mission.

Second, Opportunity confirmed for the first time that liquid water once existed on Mars, and now there may be groundwater. Opportunity landed on the meridian plateau, where a large amount of crystalline hematite (a kind of rust) was found, which means that it may be the location of the huge ocean or lake of ancient Mars. Opportunity further analyzed the soil composition of Mars, and found that Martian soil only contains 2% water and air, and the remaining 98% are minerals and metals. Nickel and zinc were found in Martian soil for the first time. Both of them generally exist in the earth's core, which means that there was an active volcanic eruption on the surface of Mars.

Opportunity went to the bottom of an ancient lake, where many water-bearing minerals including hematite were found, and even traces of water flowing at the bottom of the pit were observed. This basically confirmed that there was liquid water on ancient Mars, and there may be liquid water below Mars today.

The above picture shows hematite crystallization.

In fact, luck is still very good. He also found a meteorite made of iron and nickel on Mars, which is the first time that humans have found a meteorite on another planet. Of course, his good luck doesn't stop there. Initially, scientists predicted that the dust on the surface of Mars would cover the solar panels of the rover Opportunity within 90 days, so in design, Opportunity only had a life span of 90 days, but storms and tornadoes on Mars repeatedly blew away the dust that blocked the solar panels of Opportunity, which made him work for 15 years. If our rover lands in the same position in the future, we can help Opportunity brush the solar panels again and see if we can wake up this old-timer.