LOS ANGELES (AP) — Opportunity, NASA’s other Mars rover, has
tooled around the red planet for so long it’s easy to forget
it’s still alive. Some 5,000 miles away from the limelight
surrounding Curiosity’s every move, Opportunity this week
quietly embarks on its tenth year of exploration — a sweet
milestone since it was only tasked to work for three months.
“Opportunity is still going. Go figure,” said mission deputy
principal investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in
St. Louis. True, it’s not as snazzy as Curiosity, the most high-
tech interplanetary rover ever designed. It awed the world with
its landing near the Martian equator five months ago. After so
many years crater-hopping, Opportunity is showing its age: It
has an arthritic joint in its robotic arm and it drives mostly
backward due to a balky front wheel — more annoyances than show-
stoppers. For the past several months, it has been parked on a
clay-rich hill along the western rim of Endeavour Crater that’s
unlike any scenery it encountered