After 11 years on the surface of the Red Planet, the Opportunity rover has traveled 26.2 miles, and you can watch its spectacular journey here.
NASA’s Mars Opportunity rover has just reached the marathon mark on the Red Planet after more than 11 years: 26.2 miles.
The robot has now gone the length of a full marathon ever since it and its twin rover Spirit landed 2004, according to a Los Angeles Times report.
The robots were only supposed to work for 90 days, but they just kept on humming for years afterward, handling Mars harsh climate and difficult terrain before Spirit finally got stuck in a sand trap in 2009, with NASA sending the final commands to that rover back in 2011. But Opportunity kept on ticking, and is still operational today.
In its long career, Opportunity has discovered a lot, from signs to past water on the surface of Mars to evidence of chemistry that would be conducive to life, something that its successor, the Mars Curiosity rover, has also found further evidence of.
But the rover is showing signs of its age. It has a “gimpy shoulder” as well as a damaged wheel, and its memory isn’t what it used to be. Its flash memory is inoperable, meaning the rover must send data to Earth each day or else it is lost.
So what’s next for the rover? It recently spotted some reddish rock at a spot that has been dubbed the “Spirit of St. Louis,” and it will be sent into the Marathon Valley at the rim of the Endeavor crater. Once there, Opportunity will angle its solar panels toward the sun and settle in for the winter, continuing to study some clay outcrops.