Opportunity Rover Lands on Mars

Date: January 25, 2004 • Location: Rome, Italy

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity landed on Mars and rolled into Eagle crater, a small crater on the Meridiani Planum.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two rovers to explore the Martian surface and geology; both landed on Mars at separate locations in January 2004. Both rovers far outlived their planned missions of 90 Martian solar days: MER-A Spirit was active until March 22, 2010, while MER-B Opportunity was active until June 10, 2018.