Steve Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy and the scientific principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, and Bill Nye '77, president of The Planetary Society, provided key lectures as part of the "Opportunity: Ten Years on Mars" event Jan. 16, 2014 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.
The twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on the red planet in January 2004. Having long outlasted its original 90-day mission, Opportunity begins its second decade of exploration and still traverses the oxidized terrain to answer crucial questions of cosmic exploration.