NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover, like the Voyager spacecraft just keeps going beyond all expectation. The rover, which launched in July of 2003, recently celebrated the 11th year of its three month mission on the Red Planet.

Last year, the rover passed the Soviet Union’s Lonokhod 2 moon rover to become the furthest travelled off-Earth vehicle ever constructed.

This week, Opportunity passed yet another milestone completing the equivalent of a Marathon. As of Tuesday, the rover has travelled 26.219 miles or 42.195 kilometers on Mars. Its time, 11 years and two months, wouldn’t win many races on Earth but it is the fastest time yet for a human built spacecraft on an alien planet.

“This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world. A first time happens only once,” said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California in a statement.

Since landing on Mars in 2004, opportunity has provided ample evidence that the planet was once wet and had water flowing on its service. Examinations of the Endeavor Crater have provided evidence of conditions that might once have been conducive to microbial life and the rover is still going and exploring, for now.

“This mission isn’t about setting distance records, of course; it’s about making scientific discoveries on Mars and inspiring future explorers to achieve even more. Still, running a marathon on Mars feels pretty cool,” said Steve Squyres, Opportunity principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Although there are no known serious problems with the Opportunity rover, 2015 may mark the end of its mission. When NASA submitted it’s 2016 budget proposal, Opportunity was conspicuously absent from the list of projects that the agency was seeking funding for.

It is still possible that members of congress interested in the project may put funding for Opportunity back into the budget.

“The idea of allowing it to die a lonely death out there in space is appalling, particularly when it continues to do good science. Sometimes NASA will do things like this because they know the programs enjoy strong congressional support and they expect Congress to find the money to support the funding. But that’s not a very prudent way to budget or to plan,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) told the Los Angeles Times in March of 2014 during a different budget process.

Of course there are also interests that go beyond the love of science and exploration. Shiff’s congressional district includes Pasadena, California which is home to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the jobs that go with it.

NASA administrators are also aware that they cannot have everything and the agency’s attention is beginning to shift to the Mars 2020 rover, which will be bigger, faster and have even more advanced equipment than even the, much newer than Opportunity, Curiosity rover.

Small helicopter drones to conduct aerial surveillance and equipment that will allow researchers to navigate Mars in a virtual 3-D environment are just a few of the new features that are being considered for the newest addition to NASA’s rover family.