US space agency NASA will make one final attempt to contact its Opportunity Rover on Mars late Tuesday, eight months after it last made contact.

The agency also said it would hold a briefing Wednesday, during which it will likely officially declare the end of the mission.

Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 and covered 28 miles (45 kilometers) on the planet, securing its place in history after lasting well beyond its expected 90-day mission.

But a giant dust storm last year blocked sunlight from Mars, stopping Opportunity's solar-powered batteries from being able to recharge.

Despite NASA engineers' best efforts to get a response via radio channels, its last communication was on June 10, 2018.

In August, NASA caused an outcry after setting a 45-day deadline before it would declare "Oppy" dead. In October, it extended the deadline to January to reevaluate the situation.

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More than 835 recovery commands have been sent to Opportunity
Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 11, 2019
Mars atmospheric opacity (tau) over the rover site is estimated to be somewhere in the range of 0.9 to 1.3. No signal from Opportunity has been heard since Sol 5111 (June 10, 2018) during the historic global dust storm. Opportunity likely experienced a low-power fault, a mission clock fault and an up-loss timer fault. The team is continuing to listen for the rover over a broad range of times, frequencies and polarizations using the Deep Space Network (DSN) Radio Science Receiver. The t ... read more