NASA will discuss the status of its Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity in a media briefing at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) Wednesday, Feb. 13, from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The briefing will air live on NASA Television, the agency's website and YouTube.
The briefing will follow NASA's last planned attempts to communicate with Opportunity late Tuesday evening. The solar-powered rover last communicated with Earth June 10, 2018, as a planet-wide dust storm was blanketing the Red Planet.
Briefing participants will include:
- NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine
- Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate
- Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA's Planetary Science Division
- Michael Watkins, JPL director
- Steve Squyres, MER principal investigator at Cornell University
- John Callas, MER project manager
- Matt Golombek, MER project scientist
- Abigail Fraeman, MER deputy project scientist
- Jennifer Trosper, Mars 2020 project systems engineer
The public can ask questions on social media using the hashtag #askNASA or by leaving a comment in the chat section on YouTube.
A recording of the briefing will be available shortly after its conclusion at:
NASA's twin robot geologists, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on Mars in 2004 in search of answers about the history of water on the planet. Spirit concluded its mission in 2010. JPL manages Spirit and Opportunity for NASA.
For more information about the Mars Exploration Rover program, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer
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