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Timeline of Opportunity

robotic rover that was active on the planet Mars from 2004 to 2018

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ16000500 ↗
Source-derived summary

Opportunity is a robotic rover that was active on the planet Mars from 2004 to 2018. Launched on July 7, 2003, Opportunity landed on Mars' Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, at 05:05 Ground UTC (about 13:15 Mars local time), three weeks after its twin Spirit (MER-A), also part of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission, touched down on the other side of the planet. While Spirit became immobile in 2009, and ceased communications in 2010, Opportunity exceeded its planned 90 sol (Martian days) duration of activity by 14 years 46 days (in Earth time). Opportunity continued to move, gather scientific observations, and report back to Earth until 2018. What follows is a summary of events during its continuing mission.

Opportunity started in Eagle crater in 2004, literally landing inside on the crater basin, then it travelled outward making its way to Endurance crater. After this it went to Victoria crater, all the way making many panoramas, measurements, studying rocks, and smaller craters, even what are thought to be meteorites. It then traveled to Endeavour crater, where it has been making its way south along the Western rim. On June 10, 2018, contact was lost when a global dust storm blotted out the Sun, thus depriving the rover of enough power for operations, and communication with Earth. In September 2018, after the storm subsided, NASA began making various efforts to contact, and listen to the rover if it endured the storm.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Timeline of Opportunity” as robotic rover that was active on the planet Mars from 2004 to 2018. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Timeline, Opportunity and robotic.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004, 2018, 2003, 2009—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Timeline, Opportunity and robotic providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Timeline of Opportunity”, the useful work is to connect “robotic rover that was active on the planet Mars from 2004 to 2018” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16000500. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2018, 2003 and 2009.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Timeline of Opportunity”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Timeline of Opportunity primary sources, Timeline of Opportunity archive and Timeline research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Timeline of Opportunity” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.