If you thought current media-darling Curiosity is where all the martian action is right now, think again. Its elder sibling, Opportunity, is still rolling up there too. In fact, it's just wheeled its way into a little page of NASA history: the longest distance one of its vehicles has traveled on a body beyond Earth. A recent short (by our standards) trip of 263 feet took its total to 22.22 miles covered on Mars' surface since landing in January 2004. The previous title holder was a Lunar Rover, part of the Apollo 17 mission over 40 years ago, that covered (if you hadn't guessed) 22.21 miles. Opportunity's not beat the world galaxy record though. That honor goes to the Soviet Lunokhod rover, which totted up a total of 23 lunar-based miles back in 1973. In relative terms, Curiosity's barely stretched its legs.
Filed under: Science, Alt
Comments
Via: CNET
Source: NASA
This weekend, NASA's Opportunity rover spent its 5,000th day on Mars. While that is a feat in and of itself, it's even more impressive when you consider that it was only planned to last 90 Martian days, or sols. Both Opportunity and its companion rov...
When the Opportunity made its Mars landing on January 24th, 2004, NASA believed the rover would only last about 90 days, due to the Red Planet's dusty nature. But, thanks to unexpected winds which kept Opportunity's solar panels clean, that obviously...