In the final moments of Stephen Spielberg's 2001 film AI: Artificial Intelligence, android boy David brings his "mother" Monica back to life for a single, bewildering day. People think this scene is sentimental, but it actually underlines the film's dark central point: David can never be a real boy, and the bizarre and cruel resurrection of Monica only reinforces his intrinsic inhumanity. This came to mind on Thursday night, as I snuck in late to Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's "concert in hologram" with legendary soprano Maria Callas. Callas died in 1977, and she appears here via "cutting-edge holographic technology", according to the program. The hologram – which uses projectors and motion capture technology to create a 3D image of Callas – interacts with the audience without speaking directly to us; she motions to conductor Daniel Schlosberg, who motions back. She pauses for applause even after any real applause has died off.

Last night, NASA reached out one final time to the Opportunity rover on Mars, hoping the golf-cart-sized machine would phone home with good news. Since June, the robot has been unresponsive, likely because a planet-wide sandstorm coated its solar panels in dust. NASA has pinged it over 1,000 times in those gloomy eight months, to no avail. Last night's attempt was no exception: NASA has announced that Opportunity is officially dead. "I was there yesterday and I was there with the team as these commands went out into the deep sky," said NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen in a briefing this morning, titled A Lifetime of Opportunity.

It's been seven months since NASA last made contact with the Opportunity rover – but, the team isn't ready to give up hope just yet. The rover celebrated a bittersweet 15th anniversary on Mars last week as it remains silent after a dust storm that blanketed the red planet back in June. Engineers on the Opportunity team say they're now trying out a new set of commands in attempt to wake up the robotic explorer over the next few weeks. Opportunity landed on Jan. 24, 2004, and logged more than 28 miles (45 kilometers) before falling silent during a global dust storm June 2018. There was so much dust in the Martian atmosphere that sunlight could not reach Opportunity's solar panels for power generation The new commands are an effort to coax the rover back into operation and address the low-likelihood events that may have happened in the wake of the storm, preventing it from sending messages back to Earth, NASA says.

MIAMI – One of the biggest Martian dust storms on record is clearing up after nearly three months, raising hope that NASA's stranded solar-powered robotic vehicle, Opportunity, will soon come back to life. The storm was first detected on May 30, and the U.S. space agency's 15-year-old rover was last heard from on June 10, when it went into "sleep" mode as dust blocked out the sun and darkness enveloped the red planet. A NASA statement issued late Thursday called the situation "critical" but added that "the rover team is cautiously optimistic, knowing that Opportunity has overcome significant challenges during its 14-plus years on Mars." If no successful contact can be made, NASA will give up active efforts in mid-October. "If we do not hear back after 45 days, the team will be forced to conclude that the sun-blocking dust and the Martian cold have conspired to cause some type of fault from which the rover will more than likely not recover," said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.