Saying goodbye to Spirit and Opportunity this week on Planetary Radio.

Welcome, I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the humid adventure across our solar system and beyond.

It's Wednesday, February 13th in the Jet Propulsion Labs von Carmen Auditorium.

Here is NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zerbukin.

I was there yesterday and I was there with the team as these commands went out into the deep sky and I learned this morning

that we had not heard back and our beloved opportunity remain silent.

It is therefore that I'm standing here

with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude that I declare the opportunity mission as

complete and with it the Mars Exploration Rover mission as complete.

I have to tell you, this is an emotional time.

I stand here surrounded by a team that I, before I even came to Nassau, I got to know as I watched this amazing entry to

descent and planning, the development

and of course at the center of that were two people.

Pete Tyzinger was right here ahead of me.

He's a hero in the world that will have been.

Thank you. And right next to me right here is Steve Squires. You can meet them later. Another hero

here, another hero for all of us. It's a team that makes

it's a team that makes success like this. It's a team that creates

exploration, transformative expiration for science and engineering. And it's a team

that is celebrating here today emotionally.

I remember the emotions.

I saw that Cornell professor jumping up and down like my four-year-old at his birthday

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