‘It’s getting dark’: ‘Good Night Oppy’ recounts the sudden death of a Mars rover

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In the opening scenes of the new film “Good Night Oppy,” the Opportunity rover rolls along through Perseverance Valley on Mars in June 2018, as “Roam” by The B-52s fills the room at mission control.

The peppy tune was the rover’s wake-up song, played at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the same way NASA has used a song to wake up astronauts each day they spend in space since the 1960s, the Opportunity rover team began their daily shifts with a song that set the mood for “Oppy’s” journey.

But a storm brewing on the horizon changed everything.

The documentary film "Good Night Oppy" follows the Mars Opportunity rover, which turned what NASA expected to be a 90-day mission into 15 years of exploration on the red planet.

Oppy had weathered dust storms before, along with solar flares, sand traps, cosmic rays, near collisions and harsh Martian winters for more than a decade while exploring the red planet. In 2018, however, her team was able to recognize the signs of “gray hairs” — a failing memory, the desire to nap, arthritis in the robotic arm.

Mission team members still thought of her as their lucky rover, though — invincible. After all, Oppy was designed for a 90-day mission, but she had exceeded all expectations and outlived her twin sister, Spirit, by some seven years.

This storm was different. It rapidly grew in size, encircling the planet and blocking out the sun.

The solar-powered rover’s last message to mission control translated to this: “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.”

This chapter is just the beginning of the documentary, available to stream on Amazon Prime on November 23. The film traces the journey of the twin rovers and the people who dedicated their lives to them from concept to that last transmission.

The film shines a light on the hope of space exploration and captures the emotional attachment between humans and the robotic ambassadors that explore on our behalf.

Director Ryan White has woven together decades of footage from the NASA vaults with photorealistic effects and animation from Industrial Light & Magic, the famed visual effects company founded by George Lucas, and narration from actor Angela Bassett. The documentary places the viewer on Mars along with the two rovers as they roam on opposite sides of the red planet.

“Even though the spacecraft was robotic, the mission was human,” said Doug Ellison, engineering camera team lead for the Curiosity Rover at JPL, who also worked on Opportunity’s mission.

Twin robots

As NASA engineers built and tested the twin rovers in the early 2000s, they quickly realized the robots couldn’t be more different. Spirit was the headstrong drama queen while Opportunity was the overachiever, according to team members. Spirit was stubborn and struggled through the same tests that Opportunity breezed through. Their personalities seemed as human as their design.

The rovers were built to search for past evidence of water on Mars. Both launched in 2003 inside protective shells aboard Delta rockets and landed in 2004 on opposite sides of the red planet. The dual mission’s first 90 days came and went, and the JPL team realized the two rovers were ready for more adventure.

This image is a cropped version of the last 360-degree panorama taken by the Opportunity rover's panoramic camera from May 13 through June 10, 2018. The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see.

Are those Martian blueberries? These tiny spherules pepper the sandy surface in this 3-centimeter (1.2-inch) square view of the Martian surface. Opportunity took this image while the target was shadowed by the rover's instrument arm.

From its perch high on a ridge, Opportunity recorded this image of a Martian dust devil twisting through the valley below. Just as on Earth, a dust devil is created by a rising, rotating column of hot air. When the column whirls fast enough, it picks up tiny grains of dust from the ground, making the vortex visible.

While traversing on and around the ancient volcanic feature called Home Plate, Spirit took many images of finely layered and more frothy looking volcanic rocks.

Opportunity photographed its tracks in the soft sand between the Endurance and Victoria craters on the Meridiani Plains.

More blueberries! Opportunity took this photo in 2004 of a rock called "Last Chance." The spherules embedded in the rock reminded the researchers of berries in muffins. The textures in the rock actually helped researchers determine that Mars had wet environmental conditions in the past.

Oppy's panoramic camera gathered this mosaic in 2014 of Wdowiak Ridge, as well as the rover's tracks to the right. This is about 70 degrees from north/northwest to east/northeast, showing the 500-feet ridge that rises 40 feet tall.

The rover took a selfie to show how much dust it had accumulated in 2011 before the windy season helped knock some of it off.

Sometimes, when Opportunity's solar power was limited, it would stop between treks to different features on Mars. This 2010 photo of its tracks on the surface show it "hopping from lily pad to lily pad."

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this photo of Victoria Crater, about a half-mile in diameter. It was Opportunity's home for 14 of the first 46 months it spent on Mars.

Opportunity's panoramic camera took this photo of outcrop rocks that it encountered on its journey in 2005. Cracks and other features are obvious. The two holes visible were drilled by the rover to expose the underlying material.

A shadow selfie. On July 26, 2004, the rover took this photo commemorating its 90 days on Mars -- the amount of time the mission was supposed to last. Instead, it continued for 15 years.

Opportunity made an impact. A panoramic image shows the heat shield impact site when it landed in 2004.

This iron meteorite was the first meteorite of any type ever found on another planet. The basketball-sized meteorite is rich in iron and nickel, and Opportunity found it in 2005.

Endurance Crater and its tendrils of sand presented a beautiful photo chance for the rover in 2004. Mars is full of dunes, and this is just one example Opportunity encountered.

These pointy features were called "Razorback." They're only a few centimeters tall, but the chunks of rock were found sticking up at the edge of flat rocks in Endurance Crater. They may have formed when fluids moved through rock fractures.

In 2010, Opportunity took this panorama of the eastward horizon view of Endeavour Crater's rim.

The Mars Spirit rover was Opportunity's twin, and it's mission ended in 2011. Both rovers featured a piece of metal with the American flag on the side. They are made of aluminum recovered from the site of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.

These two views from NASA's Curiosity rover -- from June 7, left, and June 10 2018 -- show how dust increased over three days from a major Martian dust storm that became planet-encircling on June 20, 2018. Opportunity was stranded in the middle of the storm and wasn't heard from afterward.