NASA has reached another milestone from the Red Planet, announcing their Opportunity Mars rover has grasped the off-world driving distance record.
According to Space.com, Opportunity had driven 25.01 miles on Mars as of Sunday. The previous record of 24.2 miles belonged to the Lunokhod 2, a remote-controlled rover belonging to the Soviet Union in 1973.
The Lunokhod 2 rover landed the Earth's moon that year and accumulated its record-setting distance in five months, whereas Opportunity has been trekking Mars for a decade.
"Opportunity has driven farther than any other wheeled vehicle on another world," Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement. "This is so remarkable considering Opportunity was intended to drive about one kilometer and was never designed for distance. But what is really important is not how many miles the rover has racked up, but how much exploration and discovery we have accomplished over that distance."
In about another mile, Opportunity will approach "Marathon Valley," the rover's next major investigation site. Based on satellite images of clay minerals, mission managers believe there will be evidence that less acidic water once existed in the valley, according to the JPL. Scientists also believe the slopes of the valley will expose their various layers.
To offer tribute to the Lunokhod 2, NASA named a 20-foot-wide crater after the rover as Opportunity was approaching the record.
"The Lunokhod missions still stand as two signature accomplishments of what I think of as the first golden age of planetary exploration, the 1960s and '70s," Steve Squyres, principal investigator for NASA's twin Mars rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, said in the statement. "We're in a second golden age now, and what we've tried to do on Mars with Spirit and Opportunity has been very much inspired by the accomplishments of the Lunokhod team on the moon so many years ago. It has been a real honor to follow in their historical wheel tracks."
