NASA's Opportunity rover has recently completed 10 years of Mars exploration on 24 January, 2014. After the Mars rover was launched on 24 January, 2004, it has provided scientists back on earth vital information about the Martian atmosphere.

Most recently, Opportunity has provided scientists clear evidence that Mars could support life. Pictures of fresh water on Mars have excited scientists to strengthen their studies to prove that Mars has support for life. Ray Arvidson is a planetary scientist with Washington University in St. Louis. He said, "It's like drinking water. This would have been a niche for whatever life at the time existed".

Opportunity has also analyzed rocks that are older than any rocks encountered by the rover previously.

The Opportunity team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has fitted an instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to analyze minerals on the Martian surface. The instrument is known as the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. It started to scan the vicinity of Opportunity in 2010, thereby detecting the signature of a clay mineral called iron-rich smectite.

Opportunity's twin rover, Spirit, had to be discontinued in 2010. But Opportunity is still providing vital information about the red planet even after 10 years.

Opportunity has suffered some wear and tear, but is still working effectively on the Mars exploration mission much longer than scientists expected. Opportunity had a broken wheel and non-functioning of two instruments long ago.

Without Opportunity, scientists would not have been able to trace the clear evidence of water on the Mars Surface.