Mission Complete.

My battery is low and it's getting dark.

Final message from Opportunity rover, June 10, 2018.

After over a thousand attempts at contact*, NASA has officially announced that it is no longer attempting to revive the inactive Opportunity Mars rover, thereby ending the longest running rover mission to date. 

When you consider that Opportunity operated for close to 15 years and covered 45 kilometers of the Martian landscape, it's almost ridiculous to look at its original mission as part of the Mars Exploration Rover program:  to last 90 Martian days and travel one kilometer from its landing site.  On that basis, I appreciate the fact that NASA has logged this as "Mission Complete" - that's a much better epitaph for Opportunity than any of the various headlines announcing that the rover is dead.  It's equally appropriate that Opportunity's last resting place is in Perseverance Valley, on the edge of Endeavour Crater. 

In his 2012 book Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the following comment:

Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I'll stay down here and get the data. But nobody's ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody's ever named a high school after a robot. So when I don my public-educator hat, I have to recognize the elements of exploration that excite people. It's not only the discoveries and the beautiful photos that come down from the heavens; it's the vicarious participation in discovery itself.

I'm sorry, Neil, but I have to disagree with you.  I think that in this case, it would be completely appropriate to name a high school after a robot: you'd be hard pressed to find a better example of how to overcome obstacles and exceed expectations than Opportunity.

- Sid

* Including an 18-song playlist.