After more than eight months without any communication, NASA officially declared the Mars Opportunity Rover's mission completed on Wednesday, Feb. 13.
The Opportunity Rover was on the planet of Mars for a record-breaking 15 years, since 2004.
"I declare the Opportunity mission as complete, and with it the Mars Exploration Rover mission complete," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said Wednesday, reported by Space.com.
NASA's official Twitter account also shared confirmation of the mission ending and information about what the Opportunity Rover has brought in terms of data and knowledge to their team.
Opportunity was known for finding conclusive evidence that the dusty, red surface of Mars did in fact house large amounts of liquid water in it's history.
Today, we're saying #ThanksOppy as the @MarsRovers mission comes to an end. 6 things to know about our record-breaking, discovery-making, marathon-driving rover, which found that ancient Mars was awash in water... and some of the best images it sent back: https://t.co/ZR7pxBP1ZF pic.twitter.com/2L0gzr4WNJ— NASA (@NASA) February 13, 2019
Another rover, called Spirit was dropped on the planet around the same time as Opportunity, and both were planned to only record data for 90 days. Spirit ended up getting stuck in a sand trap in 2010, and eventually froze, but also contributed huge discoveries for scientists to understand Mars and the potential of being a habitable planet.
One of the other discoveries from Opportunity, is it's analysis of clay minerals, which indicated that water with a neutral pH balance flowed on the planet sometime between 4 and 3.5 billion years ago.
NASA has started a hashtag on Twitter since the announcement, known as #ThanksOppy and is asking people to share their thoughts and memories with the hashtag on social media.
For more on science news, read about how an underground frozen lake that was found on Mars is confusing scientists, and the details of NASA's InSight successfully landing on the red planet this past November.
Jessie Wade is a news writer at IGN and almost went to school for astronomy. Follow her on Twitter @jessieannwade.