Curiosity (rover) ground then fired several pyrotechnic fasteners activating cable cutters on the bridle to free itself from the spacecraft descent stage. The descent stage then flew away to a crash landing, and the rover prepared itself to begin the science portion of the mission. Live video showing the first footage from the surface of Mars was available at NASA TV, during the late hours of August 6, 2012 PDT, including interviews with the mission team. The NASA website momentarily became unavailable from the overwhelming number of people visiting it, and a 13-minute NASA excerpt of the landings on its YouTube channel
Opportunity (rover) early June 2018, a large global-scale dust storm developed and within a few days the rover's solar panels were not generating enough power to maintain communications, with last contact on June 10, 2018. NASA stated they did not expect to resume communication until after the global dust storm subsided, but the rover kept silent even after the storm ended in early-October, suggesting either a catastrophic failure or a layer of dust covered its solar panels. The team remains hopeful that a windy period between November 2018 and January 2019 may clear the dust from its solar panels, as has happened