Twenty years ago, NASA’s Opportunity rover landed on Mars. Its twin, Spirit, had reached the surface three weeks earlier. The two robotic field geologists would usher in a new era of Mars exploration and confirm liquid water once flowed on the planet’s surface.
At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, an international group of high schoolers watched Opportunity’s dramatic descent alongside scientists and engineers working on the mission. The students were part of The Planetary Society’s Red Rover Goes to Mars program, a partnership with LEGO to engage and educate the public, and give students opportunities to participate in Mars missions.
Among the “student astronauts,” as they were called, was Abigail Freeman. After the celebration of a successful landing and a raucous press conference, she and other participants watched with the science team as the rover’s first images arrived, showing it had come to a rest inside a shallow crater.
“Those images just hooked me completely, because they showed a picture of Mars that was unlike any other picture of Mars we’d ever seen,” said Freeman recently. “It really showed me that Mars is a place we can explore, and there’s so much we haven’t seen.”
The experience convinced Freeman to pursue a career in space. In the time it took her to earn a Ph.D. in planetary science, Opportunity was still exploring Mars on what became a 14-year mission, even though the rover was only supposed to last 90 days. In a full-circle moment, Freeman became the deputy project scientist for the Opportunity mission. Now, she is the deputy project scientist for the Curiosity mission.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that this program literally changed my life,” she said of Red Rover Goes to Mars.
Quotes in this article were drawn from an interview on Planetary Radio and have been edited for clarity and brevity.