NASA's longest-lived robot on Mars isn't calling home. Here's why there's a chance it could be dying.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

• A global dust storm has been raging on Mars since June.
• The Opportunity rover began hibernating on June 10th to wait out the storm, but it has yet to wake up and call NASA.
• If the robot can't get enough sunlight, its batteries may brown out or lack the electricity to power heaters.
• Blistering cold on Mars can snap electronic circuits inside Opportunity if they aren't warmed.

A global dust storm on Mars is threatening the future of NASA's Opportunity rover, the longest-lived robot on that planet.

The golf-cart-size vehicle launched toward Mars in June 2003, landed in January 2004, and was supposed to last three months. Today, the rover is 15 years old and has rolled more than a marathon's worth of miles across the surface of the red planet using solar power.See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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