Last November, Amazon studios released a documentary chronicling the remarkable true story of Opportunity, the Mars rover launched in July of 2003 that Pacific Transformer has a small hand in building.
Just two years prior to the development of the famous rover, another Mars mission had just concluded in an embarrassing double failure of the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter. A new Mars mission seemed unlikely. However, as luck would have it, a rover proposal from geologist Steve Squyres, over a decade earlier made it into the hands of a small group of engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The team realized that the proposal could couple to an existing landing system which made another Mars mission financially viable. The approved proposal included a pair of twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity with a collective mission to search for signs of water during its planned life of 90 days each.
The team at NASA, as dictated by the alignment of the planets, had only 26 months to design, build and test the pair. This is where Pacific Transformer enters the story. Our team was tasked with designing and developing DC-to-DC converter parts for the pair of rovers. These parts were vital to power systems within the rovers.
In the summer of 2003, the pair of rovers were launched three weeks apart. The journey to Mars took 6.5 months and unlike the failed Polar Lander, both Spirit and Opportunity made it safely and with all systems intact—a huge relief to NASA. With only 90 days planned for the life of the rovers, the team at JPL got to work right away working 24-hour shifts of planned scientific exploration. During the first 90 days, both rovers executed their missions flawlessly and were considered a complete success. However, with no signs of distress, NASA made a decision to continue the mission so long as the rovers were operational and productive.
An incredible eight years later, both rovers were still actively exploring until a planned winter communication hiatus came. When it was time to re-establish communication with Spirit, the rover did not respond, ending its incredible journey. However, Opportunity continued. Fast forward years later to June of 2018, when a multi-month planetary dust storm hit the remaining rover, and like its twin, Opportunity was never able to re-establish communication. On February 13th, 2019, NASA officials declared the mission complete with more than 15 years of unplanned exploration—one of the most successful missions in NASA’s history.
During their time on Mars, the two rovers made incredible discoveries that confirmed that there was once water on the red planet but also that the composition of the surface could have supported life at one point. If you would like to read more about their amazing discoveries, you can visit the program’s website: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/science/results/
We are proud to have been a part of such a historic mission and encourage you to check out the Goodnight Oppy documentary on Amazon Prime.
