NASA’sOpportunityrover landed on Mars on January of 2004 , and this week , it set a new off - Earth roving distance record , accrue just over 40 kilometers ( 25 miles ) of driving .
“ Opportunity has driven farther than any other wheeled vehicle on another world,“John Callas of NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratorysays in anews departure . " This is so remarkable believe Opportunity was intended to drive about one km and was never plan for length . ”
Long beforeCuriosityarrived on the scene , the rover pairSpiritand Opportunity were cruise on the Red Planet . They were each designed to operate for just 90 sols ( or Martian days , about 24 hour and 39.5 minutes long),Ars Technica explains , and they both surpass that lifespan . Spirit ’s solar power arrays halt generating electricity in 2010 , and chance is still chugging along after observe its10th anniversary . In this time , this plucky scouter has been help us see the composition of Mars , even sending back clues of past piss activity .
“ No one in their godforsaken dreams thought the rover would last this long,”Callas tells the Los Angeles Times . “ People made bets early on – ‘ Maybe we can get to the first Martian winter , ’ ‘ Maybe we can get two year out of it ’ – but no one think that it would last this long . ”
force back just 48 meter ( 157 feet ) on July 27 , 2014 put Opportunity ’s total odometry at 40.25 km ( 25.01 miles ) . Its route is mapped above . This month ’s drive brought the rover southward along the westerly flange of Endeavour Crater ; it arrived at this 22 - kilometer ( 14 - nautical mile ) full crater in 2011 . These sites show evidence of ancient environments with less acidic water than those analyse at the rover ’s landing place land site , inside the Eagle Crater .
The previous distance record was held by the Soviet Lunokhod 2 rover , which land on Earth ’s moonlight on January 15 , 1973 . There , it drove about 39 kilometers ( 24.2 miles ) in less than five month . As Opportunity neared this driving record before this class , the rover team choose the name Lunokhod 2 for a crater about 6 meters ( 20 foot ) in diam on the outer slope of the westerly rim of Endeavour Crater . Pictured to the right is a natural color horizon from Opportunity showing the Lunokhod 2 Crater , which lies south of Solander Point . It was incur during Opportunity ’s 3,644th sol of geographic expedition ( that is , April 24 of this year ) . Part of the bird of passage , include its solar arrays and bird’s-eye tv camera , is visible at the bottom .
If Opportunity can continue to operate the space of a marathon – about 42.2 kilometre ( 26.2 miles ) – it will border on the next major investigation site military mission , which has already been dub " Marathon Valley . " Observations from ballistic capsule orbiting Mars intimate several corpse minerals are scupper close together at this valley , which is surrounded by steep gradient of visibly different layers .
This chart below provide a comparison of the distance drive by various wheeled vehicle on the Earth’s surface of Mars and our moon as of July 28 , 2014 . Here , it ’s been cropped to fit out the top three , though the full paradigm ( which includes Curiosity ) is availablehere .
Images : NASA / JPL - Caltech / MSSS / NMMNHS(top),NASA / JPL - Caltech / Cornell / Arizona State Univ.(middle),NASA / JPL - Caltech(bottom )
