NASA’s longest-running rover on Mars, Opportunity, has been pronounced dead.

It is 15 years after the rover landed on the red planet, with the vehicle only built to operate for three months.

But it is reported a ferocious dust storm eight months ago critically injured the device.

Opportunity, which is roughly the size of a golf buggy, roamed a record 28 miles (45 kilometres) during its life on Mars.

NASA made more than 800 attempts to contact the rover after the dust storm in June without success.

Opportunity found evidence that ancient Mars had water flowing on its surface and might have been capable of sustaining microbial life.

Engineers tried different things to revive Opportunity, sending repeated signals and commands to attempt to fix other potential issues but after sending more than 1,000 recovery messages they gave up.

“We simply lost contact,” said Steve Squyres, a planetary scientist at Cornell University and the principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Project.

“It’s like an old-time explorer who sets out over the horizon in the midst of a storm and you never hear from them again.”

Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, NASA, said the rover “remained silent” after a last-ditch effort to contact Opportunity on Tuesday.

The rover, which landed on Mars in January 2004, “transformed our understanding of our planet”, Zurbuchen said.

Opportunity landed on Mars shortly after its twin – a rover called Spirit. They were both part of Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rover programme.

The Spirit got stuck in soil in 2009 and was declared defunct in 2011.

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