This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato, coming to you today from the studios of WBEZ in Chicago.

It's been an emotional week for fans of a certain persistent explorer, and no, I am not talking about that raccoon that scaled a tower in Minnesota earlier this week.

I'm talking about Opportunity, the longest-running rover on Mars. Opportunity has been

on the red planet since 2004. Survived years longer than its 90-day design lifetime, but a mammoth

dust storm on Mars now threatens its continued existence. Here with an opportunity update plus other short subjects in science,

is Rachel Feldman, senior editor for Popular Science and host of their new podcast,

The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week.

She joins us from our studios in New York.

Good to have you back, Rachel.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Ira.

This rover is not the weirdest thing this week, but a very sad thing. Why is it in jeopardy? Yeah, thanks for having me, Ira. This rover is not the weirdest thing this week, but a very sad thing.

Why is it in jeopardy?

Yeah, so it could have been very sad news, but for now we're being cautiously optimistic.

As you said, Opportunity has lived a very long and productive life, so it has a lot of fans, not just in NASA, but around the world.

And this duststorm is covering a quarter of the planet.

It's one of the biggest dust storms they've ever seen on Mars in the time that we've been able to observe the red planet.

And the problem is that opportunity is solar powered.

And the dust is blocking out enough of the sunlight that it's getting basically no power.

Now, the dust storm has reached where curiosity is on the other side of the planet, but curiosity is totally fine.

It has a nuclear reactor.

The issue, again, for opportunity is that power.

So right now it's kind of powered down, and there was some concern because it missed a scheduled check-in last week or in this past week, and NASA announced a press conference.

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