From Shannon Proudfoot, Maclean’s:
“Tanya Harrison was an undergraduate student when the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) named Opportunity landed on the red planet in 2004. She was studying astronomy and physics at the University of Washington at the time, and she hoped that in her future career, she might get to work on a rover like Opportunity.
The rover and her twin, Spirit, were designed for 90-day missions, collecting images and performing geological analysis on the fourth planet from the sun, but instead, Opportunity trundled along for an astonishing 15 years (Spirit’s mission ended in 2010).”
Read more: Opportunity, the overachieving Mars rover, finally says goodbye (MacLean’s)