Five rovers have landed on Mars, and two of them are still working. Perseverance and Curiosity continue to explore the planet’s surface, while Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity all ended their missions after losing power. Here’s what happened to each one and where things stand now.
Perseverance: Collecting Samples at the Crater Rim
Perseverance is NASA’s newest and most active rover. It landed in Jezero Crater in February 2021 and has been collecting rock and soil samples ever since, with the long-term goal of sending them back to Earth for lab analysis. As of early 2025, the rover has sealed 30 of its 38 planned sample tubes and is exploring the rim of Jezero Crater, an area scientists believe was once flooded by an ancient river delta.
The rover’s companion, a small helicopter called Ingenuity, flew 72 times before a hard landing on January 18, 2024, ended its mission for good. During that final flight, the helicopter’s navigation system couldn’t track features on the ground, causing it to touch down too fast on a sloped sand ripple. The impact snapped all four rotor blades about a third of the way from their tips, and the resulting vibration ripped one blade from its root entirely. Ingenuity still sits where it landed but can no longer fly or communicate reliably with the rover. It set a final distance record of 1.8 miles between itself and Perseverance on November 26, 2024, marking its last communication.
Curiosity: Still Climbing After 12 Years
Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on August 5, 2012, and is still going. As of sol 4823, it has driven 22.58 miles across the Martian surface, slowly climbing the slopes of Mount Sharp, a layered mountain in the center of the crater. Each layer of rock tells a different chapter of Mars’ climate history, and Curiosity has been reading those chapters one by one.
The reason Curiosity has lasted so long comes down to its power source. Unlike the solar-powered rovers before it, Curiosity runs on a nuclear battery that converts heat from decaying plutonium dioxide into electricity. Just 4.8 kilograms of fuel provides enough power for roughly 14 years, which means the rover still has energy to spare. It doesn’t depend on sunlight, so dust storms and long Martian winters don’t threaten to shut it down the way they did for earlier missions.
Opportunity: Killed by a Dust Storm
Opportunity is the rover most people are asking about when they search “what happened to the Mars rover.” It landed in January 2004 with a planned mission of 90 days and ended up lasting nearly 15 years, making it one of NASA’s most successful missions ever. It explored craters, found evidence of ancient water, and drove over 28 miles across the planet.
In June 2018, a massive dust storm engulfed Mars, blocking so much sunlight that Opportunity’s solar panels couldn’t generate enough power to keep the rover alive. The last signal came on June 10, 2018, from a location called Perseverance Valley (a coincidental name, unrelated to the newer rover). NASA engineers believed the battery voltage dropped below 24 volts, triggering a low-power fault mode that shut down everything except the mission clock. The hope was that once the storm cleared, the rover would recharge and phone home. It never did. NASA officially declared the mission over in February 2019 after months of unanswered calls.
Spirit: Stuck in Soft Sand
Spirit was Opportunity’s twin. It landed three weeks earlier in January 2004, also with a 90-day mission plan, and explored a region near Gusev Crater for over six years. In April 2009, Spirit’s left wheels broke through a thin crust at a site called Troy and sank into soft sand underneath. Despite months of careful maneuvering attempts, the rover couldn’t free itself.
Being stuck wasn’t immediately fatal. NASA repurposed Spirit as a stationary science platform, and the rover continued studying its surroundings. But without the ability to tilt its solar panels toward the sun by driving to favorable slopes, Spirit couldn’t generate enough power to survive the Martian winter. Its last communication came on March 22, 2010. NASA spent over a year trying to reestablish contact before ending the mission in May 2011. Ironically, Spirit’s stuck wheels scraped up soil that revealed evidence of subsurface water, one of its most important discoveries.
Sojourner: The First Rover on Mars
Sojourner was tiny, about the size of a microwave oven, and it arrived on Mars on July 4, 1997, as part of the Pathfinder mission. It was designed to last seven days and operated for nearly 83. The rover analyzed rocks near its landing site, proving that a small, wheeled robot could survive and navigate on another planet.
Sojourner didn’t die on its own. It depended on the Pathfinder lander to relay communications back to Earth, and the lander’s battery depleted after its last successful data transmission on September 27, 1997. Without a working relay, NASA had no way to send commands to the rover or receive its data. Flight operators spent a month trying to reestablish contact through both the main and backup transmitters before calling it. The cold Martian nights likely finished off the lander’s electronics for good.
Why Solar Rovers Don’t Last
The pattern is clear across every solar-powered rover that has reached Mars. Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity all died because they ran out of power, whether from battery depletion, sand traps preventing solar charging, or dust storms blocking sunlight. Solar panels on Mars face a fundamental problem: fine dust settles on them over time, reducing output, and the planet periodically produces storms that can blot out the sun for weeks.
Curiosity and Perseverance both use nuclear power sources instead. These generators produce electricity from radioactive decay, independent of sunlight, weather, or dust. That design choice is the single biggest reason both rovers are expected to operate for well over a decade each. Europe’s upcoming Rosalind Franklin rover, targeting a 2028 launch as part of the ExoMars program, will use solar panels but carry a drill capable of reaching two meters below the surface, a depth no rover has accessed before.